


Traces

by standinginanicedress



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Body Dysmorphia, I'd just read the notes were I you, M/M, PTSD, Post-Nogitsune, Stiles Is Seventeen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:01:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 44,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4006780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standinginanicedress/pseuds/standinginanicedress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek snaps his fingers and glares into Stiles' eyes. “You say you're not the same, but – there you fucking go, acting just like yourself.” </p><p>Stiles bristles. “Oh, right. Because you <em>know me</em> so fucking well, don't you?” </p><p>“Better than you seem to think,” he mutters under his breath in response, and Stiles gets even more incensed. </p><p>“Pushing me up against walls, shoving my head into steering wheels,” he shrugs his shoulders, glares, “some real heart to hearts we've had!” </p><p>“Holding me up in eight feet of water when I was paralyzed, nearly cutting my arm off for me to save my life. Doesn't seem so fucking <em>shallow</em> to me, Stiles.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Traces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stilescrying](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilescrying/gifts).



> So first thing's first - triggers. Where do I damn begin lmao. The body dysmorphia tag is a bit iffy because Stiles definitely doesn't meet the characteristics to qualify for the disorder, but much of the way he talks about it is pretty triggering so I was like fuck it and just tagged it as is. Also, Stiles doesn't quite meet PTSD according to the DSM in perfect flying colors and most likely wouldn't be diagnosed as such, but again, a lot of discussion of it (and it is not in any way shape or form handled well) so I put the tag in. Brief mention of past sexual assault, as well, but nothing too heavy I don't think. Some brief suicidal thoughts but nothing too seriously deep. Also, Stiles IS seventeen sadly because I couldn't think of a decent time hop to put him at 18 so he and Derek could legally get it on :( 
> 
> onto the fun stuff now okay SO in regards to canon - I follow it pretty much exactly up to a point. Pretty much everything after Allison dying has been altered in some way or another (Stiles and Lydia's relationship most notably). But everything else is canon compliant. From Stiles climbing up out of the ground in a pile of bandages and backwards through the show, it's all exactly canon! 
> 
> This is pretty much like a mini season four rewrite in all honesty lmao. The way that post-nogitsune was handled in the show really...disappointed me. 3b is my favorite fucking season and Dylan was so god damn good and like gave that shit some serious dedication and then the writers just...crapped on the aftermath? s4 didn't handle it at ALL? I could fume and rage about this all day long but instead just take this fic and know that I wish even a sixteenth of this could've been in the damn show. I've wanted to write post-nogitsune Stiles feels for FOREVER and luckily stilescrying came through with this idea and I said let's fuckin' do it.

_"No one can tell what goes on between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of Hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.  
Or you don't." _

**i. nightmare**

“Tell me the truth,” Stiles says. “Do I smell different to you?” 

Scott makes a big show out of looking perplexed by the question, like he doesn't understand where it's come from or why Stiles would even think to ask something like that – but he's never been a particularly good liar. His smile cracks around the corners, his eyes don't move with the effort, his body language is stiff, tight. “What?” 

Sidelong glance through his bedroom door, cracked open wide enough that he can see the long expanse of his hallway, drifting off into darkness towards the staircase. Scott watches his best friend's eyes move, traces his gaze, frowns, and looks back at the profile of Stiles' face. “You don't have to play dumb, Scott,” Stiles says, voice controlled, measured; he watches dust particles move through the air in the sunlight wafting in through the window in the hall. “You know what I mean.” 

It's silent. Scott wrings his hands in between his spread knees from where he sits on the edge of the bed, and he ducks his head down forwards, staring down at the floor, pointedly. “I – you – can we not talk about this?” There's a beat, then two. “I'm sorry. Shit, I'm sorry. We should _totally_ talk about this, we have to – talk about this.” 

Scott doesn't want to talk about this. Nobody wants to talk about _this_. Nobody wants to look him in the fucking eyes, because who knows who they're really looking at, right? Who knows whose eyes they're really seeing, who's _really_ looking at them? 

Everyone either feels sorry for Stiles, or feels disgusted by him. Or both. With Lydia, it's – it's both. 

“That was insensitive and stupid,” Scott decides resolutely, nodding his head firmly like he's come to this conclusion after much deliberation in his own head, “and I shouldn't have said it.”

“You should've answered my question,” Stiles hedges, and Scott sighs like he just can't fucking win, like he's just about fucking had it with Stiles' attitude all the time; and Stiles thinks _join the fucking club._

Scott unfurls his fingers and drags them up and down his face again and again. “What do you want me to say here, Stiles? I just don't want to – sit around talking about this, when it's... _behind us_ , now. We don't have to fucking deal with this anymore, it's done -”

“Everything's different now.” Stiles' voice sounds loud in his own ears, and when Scott jolts upwards like he's surprised or startled, he knows that he's yelled. That's been happening, lately; almost like his vocal chords aren't in his own control, anymore, like his voice isn't his own, like he isn't sure how to use it anymore. “Everything is _different_ now,” he repeats, quieter, more like himself – if there's even such a thing as _like himself_ for him anymore. “We can't just go back, you realize that, right?” 

“I want to go back,” Scott says it to himself, and Stiles hears it anyway. 

“You want your _best friend_ back?” Taunting, cold, like the way someone – some _thing_ – else would've said it. “You want Allison back?” He can feel himself being unreasonable, can hear himself being callous and fucking horrible and awful, but lately it's all he can stomach. He can't bear to sit and cry anymore than he already has, alone in his bedroom, and so he lashes out just to feel something else. Just to stop shaking so much, just to hold onto an actual _feeling_ for ten seconds. 

Scott is right when he snarls, “now you're just being fucking cruel -”

“There's no _going back_. You can't. Maybe you should ask where they're burying her, Scott,” Scott stands up from the bed before Stiles is even finished, shoots up hard enough that the bed jerks underneath him, nearly sending Stiles sprawling off of it. “You can go see her, then, and tell me how much it feels like _old times_.” 

Scott is at the door, ripping it open all the way so hard that the grooves creak, shaking his head back and forth and muttering under his breath about _fucking insane_ and right before he leaves, he freezes in place. Like a pause button has been pressed, like the universe is granting them both an opportunity to take everything back. 

An option, Stiles thinks for a moment. If he could have it – the choice between two radicals – which would he pick? 

Sometimes, Stiles wishes for a fast forward button. 

And other times, Stiles wishes for a reverse button. 

How much time is wasted wishing it were another year, another place, somewhere further off in the future where maybe things would be better off, and you wouldn't even think about how bad things used to be, you wouldn't even _remember_ what it was like for things to be _that_ bad. 

But, reality is a pill that gets harder to swallow every time you have to force it down your throat, because the truth is that as things go on, you learn that it just doesn't work that way. You learn that, in a year's time, it might not actually be any better. An entire year of entrances and exits, of two steps forward and one step back, of running and standing still, gone in a flash right in front of your eyes; and you think you want that, to just move forward and get through the bad. Into something – better. But it might not _be_ better. 

It just might be worse. And how can you know? 

And Stiles decides, no. He doesn't want to fast forward through this, as horrible as it is, as much as it sucks, as much as it seems like, day in and day out, he's sinking into a hole six feet underground – he just can't skip past it. Honestly, he doesn't _deserve_ to skip past it. He deserves to sink deeper and deeper until he gets swallowed whole, and he knows that, no matter what anyone says. Hell is given to those that welcome it, and Stiles may as well have been waving a neon arrow around in the air while blowing at party horns for all the fucking _welcoming_ he did, so now he gets to live with it. All of it. The knives and the pinpricks. 

But when that gets too much to bear, when every needle-prick is like fucking losing a limb, he thinks about going back, instead of going forwards; thinks about retracing his steps and changing his decisions and – and maybe... _maybe_....

What would he have done differently? Would he have chosen not to get into that bath tub full of ice water, would he have run the risk of losing his father, letting Allison's father die, letting Scott's mother die, just so he could stop feeling so fucking guilty all the time? And wouldn't it just be trading one guilt for another? And which is _worse_? The knife or the needle? 

Would he have gone farther back, would he have screamed at Derek to stay the Hell away from Jennifer Blake, would he have done everything and anything in his power to have killed her right then and there with his own bare fucking hands before she managed to get even a sixteenth of the strength that she wound up with? Could he have lived with _that_ blood on his hands, as opposed to anyone else's? 

And further back. What about all the way back to the beginning? If he could go back and tell Scott to stay home the night of the full moon, if he could've never met Derek Hale, if he could've kept Scott away from Allison, if he could've – if he could've done a lot of things. Timelines and possibilities and endless numbers of lives that he could've been living - Stiles goes to a million different scenarios every night. And he always comes back to the one he knows he's stuck with. He made his bed, and he lies in it, night after night after _fucking_ night; wide awake, drumming his fingers on his chest, staring at the ceiling, pretending like he doesn't see shadows moving out of the corners of his eyes. 

There's no reverse. And there's no fast forward. Just a brief halt in time where Scott is given the opportunity to say that he still sees Stiles when he looks at the person (thing) sitting on the bed, Scott is given the chance to insist that Stiles hasn't changed, that it's still him underneath a layer or two of grime. Just clean the grime off, and maybe – maybe. Stiles is given the opportunity to say that he's sorry, for everything, that they can salvage something out of this, start over, learn to deal. 

Instead, Scott shakes his head one more time, and says, “and you smell like death, Stiles.” It's not meant to be cruel, and Scott doesn't mean to be cruel. But certain things you can't come back from, and certain things won't be pushed under the rug, and Stiles knows the face that he sees in the mirror isn't right and the fingers he fidgets with all night long are strange and his voice is sharper. Rougher. As many times as he fingers the _self_ mark left over from the oni, he can't convince himself that it's true.

He knows.

+

The next time he sees Scott, his best friend is barging into his bedroom at ten o'clock in the morning, wearing a dark black suit, looking somewhat murderous; vindictive, Stiles thinks. Vengeful.

“You don't answer your phone,” he accuses with a jab in Stiles' direction. He clicks the light on, and Stiles squints against it with a frown; he blacked out his curtains a few days prior in the hopes that maybe he'd be able to get some sleep during the day; when there's less shadows, less creaking floorboards. It had been a complete and utter waste of his time in the end. Now he just sits in complete and utter darkness at all times of the day, tiny slivers of light stretching across his floor the only indication he has of what time of day it actually is. 

“I've been calling and calling -” Scott moves forward and takes stock of where Stiles is huddled against his wall, knees drawn up, nothing more than a dent in his mattress, “- and you've been, what? Moping in your fucking bedroom?” 

Stiles glowers and draws his knees up higher to his chest. “I told you I don't think I should go.” 

“And I told _you_ that that is complete and utter crap, Stiles. I don't care what's going through your head about all this -” oh, if Scott only knew exactly what's been going through Stiles' head for these past few days since the end of everything, “...she was your friend, too, and she'd want you there.” 

He feels his face tighten up the same way it does more often, lately, feels his foreign fingers curl tighter around his calves. They're sharper, these fingers. The body's fingers. Bonier. Colder. “She'd want _Stiles_ at her funeral,” he agrees in a monotone, turning away from Scott to stare at his wall. Still covered in red string and pictures and question marks. “I'm not -”

“I can't have this conversation with you again,” Scott practically growls, moves forward again, reaches across the mattress to grab at Stiles' arm, _tugs_. Stiles more or less just goes with it, letting himself be dragged bodily across the mattress until he's at the edge, until Scott is bending down in front of him to meet him at eye level. For a moment, Scott just stares into his eyes as if he's suddenly distracted by them, and Stiles knows exactly what it is that has him thrown. 

When before Stiles' eyes were a crisp brown; simple. Chocolatey dark on some days depending on what he was wearing, brighter amber on others. 

Now, there's something else inside of them. A ring of yellow around the edges, that you can't really notice unless you really stare into his eyes, recognize what they used to look like when he was – when he was still...

Scott swallows and shifts his eyes to Stiles' lips. “I am trying to be supportive,” his tone is very careful, like he's choosing his words the same way he might disengage a fucking bomb, “I am trying to understand that – what you're going through – I can't understand that. Okay? I get that.” 

Stiles nods.

“But you – I – this isn't -” he trails off, brings his hands up to grab onto Stiles' upper arms, squeezing like he needs that human contact, right now. 

This is the day of Allison Argent's fucking funeral, is what it is, and Scott is in his nice suit that his mother couldn't afford to rent but did anyway because she knew how much it would matter to Scott that he wear something _nice_. He's in his nice suit probably after having to force himself out of bed on shaking legs. Showering in a daze. 

And Stiles is sitting here in his pajama pants and crusty old t-shirt, an outfit he has not changed out of in days, in the darkness. Planning on sitting here all by himself and avoiding the entire thing while Scott endures it all by himself. 

A wave of guilt hits Stiles so strong that he wants to tear Scott's hands off of him, curl up underneath his quilt for the hundredth time since he became _this_ , and hide away in a sea of cowardice. 

“...you don't talk to me anymore,” Scott says, chancing another glance up into his eyes. “And I don't know what to say, and I'm sorry that I – but – I – I need you to do this.” He squeezes even more tightly onto Stiles' arms, shakes him once, twice, as if trying to wake him up, as if trying to wrangle the old Stiles, the real one, back out into the light again. “ _Please_ do this.” 

It's quiet for a moment, with the two boys staring at each other and not saying another word. Stiles doesn't know what he would say, doesn't know how to get himself out of this one; if he tries to go on another tangent about how he's not himself anymore, Scott will throw an absolute fit and probably drag him into the shower with his clothes still on, against his will. If he tries to say that he just flat out doesn't belong there with everyone else, Scott will start arguing with him again. 

Stiles is so tired. Of arguing, of _being_ in general – tired of looking down at his hands and seeing unfamiliar creases and lines, tired of staring in the mirror and seeing that his freckles are off; _tired_. 

Apparently fed up with this entire thing, Scott rises back up into a standing position, tearing his hands off of Stiles' arms and walking over to his closet. He has to walk over a sea of empty plastic water bottles and pop tart wrappers to do so, but he doesn't care – kicking what needs to be kicked out of the way with his fancy dress shoes that he must have rented as well. 

He stands at the closet, starts thumbing through articles of clothing. “You have a white dress shirt,” he says over his shoulder like he expects Stiles to be listening. “You wore it to homecoming.” 

Stiles wants to laugh. Homecoming. How he thought that was the worst things could ever get; Lydia lying bloody on the lacrosse field, the mysterious alpha threatening him. He was stupid back then. Stiles in general, he thinks, was stupid. 

Who he is now, he isn't sure. 

“Nice black pants, too.” 

Suddenly, a shirt is flying in his direction, landing with a flutter on the bed next to him. Then, a pair of pants. A belt. When Stiles looks up, Scott is standing in front of him and grabbing at his arms again to pull him into a standing position. Like before, Stiles just goes with it like a doll, manhandled into the way Scott wants him without trying to fight back. 

Scott tugs upwards on the hem of Stiles' nasty sleep shirt, until Stiles raises his arms and the thing gets thrown off, tossed to the side. Scott only takes a couple of seconds to scan up and down Stiles' bare chest; he notices the way that he's more defined now, then; less skinny, more muscled, missing a mole here and there. A scar that Stiles doesn't remember getting and Scott doesn't remember ever seeing stretching up from his bellybutton to his left nipple.

But he doesn't say a word about it. None of it. The dress shirt is in his tan hands and he fluffs it out, shaking it in front of his face like he's inspecting it for any blemishes or stains, before draping it behind Stiles and holding one of the arm holes underneath Stiles' limp hand. 

“C'mon,” he says, right as Stiles slowly slides his hand into the soft material. Scott tugs it upwards along his arm, and then does the exact same for the other arm until the shirt is hanging, loose and unbuttoned, around Stiles' pale chest. The odd, foreign scar that neither of them want to mention. Thick fingers are buttoning up his shirt, and Stiles just stands there, watching as Scott does this for him. It's so much more than Stiles could ever think to deserve, could ever _hope_ to deserve, after everything he's put Scott and the rest of his friends through. 

To be treated like something fragile that's within one wrong move of breaking. When Stiles knows better; maybe the real Stiles, the original body that he had, maybe _he_ was fragile and breakable. A hundred and forty seven pounds of pale skin and fragile bone, right? 

But this body. The new one. The one that the nogitsune created for him...there's nothing fragile or soft about this body. And this body doesn't deserve to be touched so gently, so warmly, by someone as inherently _good_ as Scott McCall. 

It doesn't matter either way. Scott gets Stiles dressed, black jacket and pants included, brushes his hair for him and lets it hang flat on top of his skull in a way that it hasn't in a very long time, and herds him out the door to where his shitty car is parked out front. 

When they're walking up to the actual funeral after parking the car, Stiles seriously considers turning around and walking back home. The entire ten mile walk with blistering feet from his uncomfortable shoes would be much, much less painful than having to see this specific crowd of people. Than having to be at _this_ specific place. 

The grass is too green, and the sun is too bright. Too high in the sky, shining down on top of everyone's heads, and it's wrong. It shouldn't be like this, Stiles thinks as he tries to make himself as small as possible next to Scott the closer they get. In the movies it's always overcast and cloudy and everyone is standing there with black umbrellas, because that's how death should be treated. Dark. Stiles' fucking bedroom at home looks a lot more like a funeral than Allison Argent's actual funeral. Fitting, he thinks. Only one of them actually deserves to have one. 

The first person that Stiles sees is Isaac. Mostly because the second he catches sight of Scott and Stiles making their way towards the gathering his eyes bulge out of his skull and he does a double take at seeing Stiles standing there. 

Which is understandable. Stiles has been completely and entirely unreachable the past few days; he imagines that Scott ranted quite a few times to Isaac about how _Stiles is being difficult_ and _Stiles isn't talking to me_ and _Stiles won't answer his phone_ and _there's something really, really wrong with Stiles._

After Isaac, it's Kira. Who just stares placidly at him as he approaches, one second, maybe two, before training her eyes back onto Scott with a tiny, sad smile. Stiles wonders how it must feel for her to be at the funeral for her boyfriend's dead girlfriend who the boyfriend in question will probably never, ever be able to get over. Especially now that he doesn't even have the chance; he was in love with her, and then she was dead. 

There was no in between. No _getting over it_ period. 

And then, possibly the worst of them all, is Lydia. 

She's standing separate from Kira and Isaac and all the other high school friends of Allison, closer to Chris Argent and Allison's extended family. She has her red hair piled high on her head in a messy bun that suggests she didn't even brush it, her lips are bare and chapped, her dress a deep black one that Stiles actually recognizes. She didn't go out and buy a new dress for the occasion. Probably hasn't left her house since...since.

She has sunglasses pushed onto her face, so Stiles can't really read the look she gives him. But if the tight-lipped frown and clenched jaw she shoots in his direction are anything to go on, then he'd say _not thrilled whatsoever_ is a pretty good guess as to how she's feeling about his presence. 

Stiles tries to convince himself that it's just because he's clearly unstable, right now. It's just because he has no right to be out in public in general, not until he's a fully functioning human being who can at least get dressed on his own, not until he can say something other than some self-deprecating bullshit about how much he fucking hates himself. 

He tries to convince himself it has nothing to do with Lydia thinking he doesn't belong here, at all. That her best friend's fucking murderer has no place standing in front of her grave, like this. Lydia wouldn't think that. Lydia couldn't think that. 

It doesn't sound convincing inside of his own head. 

When they approach, Isaac tilts his head to the side with a frown, looking grown up and babyish at the exact same time in his too-big suit. “Stiles,” he says, flicking a nervous glance in Scott's direction. “Are you sure you're feeling -”

“He's fine,” Scott cuts him off, grabbing Stiles' arm to wheel him around to stand on his opposite shoulder, away from Isaac's clearly judgmental eyes. “Allison would've wanted him here.” He repeats that same thing from earlier, and Stiles feels fucking sick to his stomach. 

Better than a sword to the gut, he thinks bitterly. 

The funeral itself is all white roses and huge blown up pictures of a smiling Allison; her Junior year school picture with her freshly shorn hair, a photo of her in that silver Homecoming dress, a close up so tight in that Stiles can see all the colors of her eyes. 

Stiles thinks he feels okay about it all. He watches in stony silence with what he hopes is no discernible expression on his face as different people move up to the microphone to speak, listens to all the things that they say about this girl who was only seventeen years old. How much is there to say? When someone is that young...how much is there to say, really? She barely had a chance to figure out who she really was. Was still battling it out inside herself with the hunter's code, with how she wanted to change things within the Argent family. 

She never really got the chance. She leaves behind nothing but plans for the future, the groundwork having not even been laid yet. 

And, again, Stiles thinks he feels okay. He thinks he's doing great, considering the circumstances. Considering the fact that he can feel eyes on him – maybe Chris Argent's, maybe Lydia's, maybe Scott's, maybe the piercing gaze of Allison from her own photos – maliciously glaring into the side of his skull. 

But when Lydia primly accepts the microphone from Chris. When she walks to stand behind the podium, right beside the giant Homecoming photo, five or ten feet away from the closed casket waiting to be lowered down onto the ground – Stiles thinks that he can't do it anymore. It's the kind of feeling where all his muscles start screaming at him to move, to get the Hell out of here, quickly, as quickly as possible, because he _can't_. 

He can't. Do this. 

Lydia takes her sunglasses off her face and drops them onto the podium with a clatter, before parting her lips and starting to speak. 

“Some of you probably know me,” she starts, gesturing vaguely to the section comprised of high school kids, Stiles included, “and for those of you who don't, who Allison never got the chance to introduce me to, my name is Lydia Martin. Allison is my best friend.” The present tense doesn't go over Stiles' head. Nor does it go over anyone else's heads, either. “I didn't know her for very long, and I think that really speaks to how much of an impact she could have on a person – that it was only under two years we had together, yet it feels like a lifetime...”

It's around this time Stiles starts feeling clammy. His hands are sweating, dripping with it, really, he keeps running his bony fingers through his oily hair, keeps shifting in his place, shivering even though the sun is beating down on him in his black outfit. 

“...I loved her the way I would have a sister, and the feeling was – mutual. That kind of friendship only comes along once in a lifetime, and I'm – lucky to have had it with Allison. I keep trying to think of it that way. That I was lucky. I am lucky. Even if...” she trails off, purses her lips. Stiles knows she won't cry. Not like this, and not here. No matter what happens, she'll keep her composure until she can't anymore. “She was fiercely protective of her friends, loyal, smart, and was always willing to help anyone who needed it. I -” 

Stiles' hands start shaking. He grips onto the ends of his jacket to try and get a hold on himself, try and control his body in general, and it's not working. It's not working. 

“...really the most amazing person I've...”

He runs his hands down his face. Thinks about the fact that he knows what it feels like to shove a fucking sword into someone's stomach, knows the sound that it makes, knows exactly how much pain it causes the victim. He fed off of that, once. He thinks about how Allison's body is twenty feet away from him in a pristine white casket, and he thinks about he wound underneath whatever nice clothes they've got her body dressed up in.

Long, and thin, and lethal. He can imagine it clear as day. 

“...and I know if she were here she'd just want to thank...”

He remembers how it felt to _like_ that. Flesh tearing, and ripping, shoving as deep as he can get, twisting it around, loving every fucking second of it - and Stiles guesses that it's selfish to sit here, like this, thinking of himself, and the toll this entire ordeal has taken on him – sitting at a dead girl's funeral and feeling like he's the one they should be lowering into the ground. Selfish.

When was the last time he was anything, _anything_ aside from fucking _selfish_? 

That's the thought that really sends him over the edge. Without warning, shocking even himself, he bends over and vomits into the grass; a truly incredible feat, considering he's eaten fucking nothing except toaster pastries for three days, now. Lydia is startled into silence, and there's the shuffling and whispering of the other guests as they turn to see what all the noise is about. 

Behind him, Scott drops his hand onto Stiles' back and starts rubbing up and down, while Stiles himself wipes the back of his hand across his mouth and then spits the last of the bile out into the grass.

It's just too much. Everything is too much. He never should've come here to begin with; if he had the right presence of mind, or any presence of mind, really, he'd have said that he couldn't fucking do it. He never should've come. He's ruined this entire fucking thing – it was never enough for the nogitsune – for him - to kill her, was it? The torment he's inflicted on him and his friends clearly isn't over, if he can't even go to the girl's funeral without ruining everything. 

After that, he's not given an opportunity to survey the damage he's done, here. Scott wraps his arm around Stiles' shoulders and starts pulling him away from the congregation; all he can hear is Lydia clearing her throat in the microphone, a whisper of _poor thing_ , and _he saw it happen, you know_ – someone that sounds like Isaac saying _Jesus fucking Christ, I told Scott he couldn't handle it._

As he's tugged through the cemetery towards where Scott's car is parked, he glances upwards at the treeline at the edge of the forest; not looking for anything, just trying to focus on a specific point, to calm his roiling stomach, to drown out the sound of Lydia talking on and on in that fucking microphone. 

He winds up catching sight of Derek Hale, standing in the woods. With his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets, his jaw appearing to be set as he watches Stiles and Scott stagger back over to the parked cars instead of watching the funeral he so clearly came here to crash on. 

Allison would've wanted Derek to be here, Stiles thinks. After everything he and Allison had been through together, ups and downs and fighting side by side – Allison definitely would've liked him to be here, today. She was like that. Chris Argent, on the other hand...

Stiles glares out the wolf, trying to meet his eyes even with the great distance in between them. 

Scott huffs out a breath as he pulls open the passenger side door for Stiles to get inside his car. “That's so like him,” he says in a clipped tone of voice. 

It takes Stiles a couple of seconds to understand that he's talking about Derek. He doesn't get the chance to respond, or to squint back out into the trees to try and catch another sight of Derek himself, because Scott is squatting down again right next to where Stiles is sitting inside the car, frowning intensely up at him and shaking his head. “I shouldn't have...” then he trails off, like he can't speak the words out loud, and that's okay, because Stiles knows what he would've said anyway. That he shouldn't have made Stiles come here. That it's too soon after everything. Days ago, _days_ , and his friends all expect him to shoot right back up into the same old Stiles Stilinski again; cracking jokes and lightening the mood whenever things get too heavy. Stiles would be annoyed at how cavalier Scott had been about this entire thing, but the guilt-ridden look on his face stops the feeling before it can even sprout. 

Stiles wants to say _it's okay, man, I was just trying to be here for you._ He wants to say _I should be able to fucking stand next to you and go through this with you instead of making you do it by yourself. Instead of being a fucking coward like this._

Instead, he sits there in silence. Words trapped inside his throat, because he doesn't want to speak them out loud with this mouth, and this voice – the harsher, rougher one that he doesn't recognize.

Scott drags his palm across his forehead, flicks his eyes to stare at the gathering enough ways in the distance that they can still hear Lydia talking, but it's just white noise to Stiles; unable to make out the words. Stiles flicks his own eyes to glance at the spot where Derek had been standing only a minute earlier – empty, now, of his presence. Vanished back into the trees. 

“You know – it's okay to be fucked up, Stiles,” he says this earnestly, if a little awkwardly. Scott has never been great at the heart-to-hearts. “What's not okay is you refusing to let me in.”

It's the wrong word choice. The exact wrong fucking word choice, and it triggers Stiles into slamming his facial expression closed, twisting his body in the passenger seat to glare straight ahead through the windshield, clamping his jaw shut so hard it almost hurts. Intrusive thought after intrusive thought, so intense that he has to slap his own hand onto his forehead and just – _squeeze_ his eyes shut to try and stop hearing that _voice_ inside of his head. 

The truth is, he hasn't yet _stopped_ hearing that voice inside of his head. 

Scott sighs. “You need help, Stiles.” It's that easy, isn't it? 

At home, Stiles cracks. 

Maybe he's been just a little bit cracked for a very long time, now, barely holding on by a thread, dangling from the edge of a cliff; maybe he's been hoping that there's water instead of rocks at the bottom for a very long time. Maybe even before the nogitsune. It's hard to tell, these days, exactly when he started feeling this way. Everything has begun to blend into one, swirling all around in his head until he can't make clear heads or tails of anything anymore. 

It's a lot like not being able to tell the difference between dream and reality. And that's a feeling he dreads so much he's willing to keep himself awake for two days at a time, just to keep the dreams at bay. Just to be sure. 

All the same, Stiles rips up the stairs and staggers down the hallway to his bedroom – ignores the way that he had subconsciously left the door ajar on his way out – and slams it behind him. As hard as physically possible, as though the louder the bang the more sure he can be that the door is actually closed this time. 

For a second he's just there. Just _there_. Him, whoever he is now, whatever _thing_ he is now, standing in the middle of the bedroom he's grown up in. Painted yellow, then green, then blue, covered in scratch marks and ticks and pencil etchings right beside the door frame that catalog his height from year to year. This is his room. He knows that; whenever he starts feeling like he's going off the fucking rails, he wraps his arms around himself and recounts simple facts like this to himself again and again. This is his bedroom. He grew up in this room. He put a hole in the wall right next to the window, underneath the band poster, with a baseball bat one year when he was thirteen. That was him. This is irrefutable fact, and he knows this. 

Yet, there's a creeping feeling that starts in the deepest pit of his gut and twists itself upwards like vines toward his head that tells him that he doesn't belong here. 

He rips his jacket off and tosses it onto the floor; then the dress shirt, which comes off in a tear as he pulls at it, buttons flying to the floor with small clatters as they scatter. And then the belt. The pants. The shoes. 

Looking down at the pile he's created, all that he has to show for the fact that he went to Allison Argent's funeral, that Allison is actually dead and he stood in front of her fucking body, he thinks about getting the gas can from the garage and dousing it. Lighting it on fire and letting the entire room burn down along with it. 

Sanity nudges him and reminds him that that's probably not the best fucking idea, no matter how satisfying it might seem while he's in this state of mind. 

Insanity, he thinks. He flicks his eyes over to the wall with the strings; something he spent long and hard working on, putting it all together and feeling proud of himself when he stepped back and saw what he had accomplished. It looks like the mark of a real problem solver; being able to connect dots like that, laying all the evidence out for him to look at. It's the physical and visual proof that he used to use to justify himself as an honest-to-god useful member of whatever ragtag pack he and his friends have got going on these days – like if he could prove that he were really the one who could figure things out, if he could prove that he could figure anything out, then he'd be...more. Than what he was. It used to be so important to him. 

Now, he looks at it, and feels like vomiting all over again. 

With a set to his jaw he lunges forwards and rips at the first thing his fingers catch hold of; the huge map of Beacon Hills in the dead center of the entire collage. It tears easily, and the sound of it makes his skin prickle with satisfaction as he looks down at the half of the map he has in his hand. He tosses it to the side, reaches for the other half. Rips it down, taking a few pieces of red string down along with him. 

Then the next thing – a picture of Allison leering out at him with a dimpled smile – torn to shreds that flutter around his feet. A picture of the Hale house, of Barrow, of Kira, red strings and yellow strings and green strings; all of it pooling around in a shredded mess around his feet as he tears the entire collage he'd created to prove his worth to the pack apart. 

It doesn't mean much to him anymore, he decides, scraping at the last of the sheets of paper left clinging to the wall and cork boards. If his entire goal all this time has been to prove himself as something more than just a skinny, fragile, weak little human...

Well. He thinks he proved that in flying fucking colors when he managed to kill or seriously injure who knows how many people. ( _Who knows_ how many? Oh, Stiles. You know _exactly_ how many.)

He stares at the pile. It doesn't _mean_ much to him anymore. Being useful to the pack – that's not what he should be thinking about or wasting his energy on. All it ever really got him, in the end of it all, was so much guilt, on top of guilt, on top of guilt, layer after layer to the point where it goes so deep, now, that no amount of time and no amount of erosion could ever break it back down to the surface of his own skin. 

And he doesn't even know if the skin he's wearing is really his. He's sure that it's not, as a matter of fact, and is absolutely positive that even though the face that he sees in the mirror looks just look him...

It's not the face he was born with. It's a recreation. _He_ is a recreation, now. A shitty attempt at an already pretty shitty original copy; the ink is faded, the text at the edges cut off, missing essential words so anyone trying to read or understand it now has to squint and tilt their heads to the side, puckering their lips and wondering what the Hell it is he's even talking about. 

The nogitsune didn't split anything. The real Stiles, the real Stiles' body, was never divided into two separate parts; the nogitsune took that body and brought it with him when he disintegrated into ash. Leaving Stiles with – with whatever this body is. 

He's got a heartbeat, and lungs to breathe, and a stomach and a mouth and teeth and everything – his hair is the same color and length, and his skin is the same shade, his nose, the shape of his eyes, his lips. It's almost hard to notice the things that are truly and really off. 

Almost.

+

“Hey.” 

Light spills in from behind Stiles' curtains. He's watched it slowly creep in from the first hint of sunrise, since that early morning gray, just sitting up in bed with his back up against the headboard, knees pulled up to his chest, staring. He flicks his eyes away from the window to catch sight of his father's face peeking in through the crack between the door and the frame, frowning in a way that suggests he wishes he could be anywhere, anywhere else. 

Talking to _anyone_ else. 

“You're gonna be late for school.” 

Stiles looks at his digital clock sitting on his desk a ways across the room. He had put it there so that when it goes off in the morning, he'd have to literally pull himself out of bed to shut it off, no opportunity for a snooze anywhere in there. Before, he used to do things like that. Back when he was actually sleeping, when the idea of sleeping in was something he did as a normal teenage boy, something he absolutely longed for. 

Now, he's wide awake every morning at six am when it goes off. He doesn't know if the new him just flat out doesn't sleep, doesn't require it like the old him would have, or if he's just too scared that he'll wake up trapped inside his own head, again, with someone else calling all the shots. 

His father shuffles slightly at the lack of response from his son, and then there's a deep huffing sigh that echoes in the emptiness of the hallway. “You can't keep skipping, Stiles.” 

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees – of course he can't. Normal seventeen year olds go to school, and that's what he's pretending to be, isn't it? A normal seventeen year old. 

Another sigh from the hallway. “That means I'm telling you that you have to go to school.” 

Stiles unfurls himself to drop his legs down onto his floor, pulling himself up out of bed without argument. As soon as he's standing upright and walking over to his closet, stepping over the mountains of ripped up pictures and papers that he still has yet to clean up, his father vanishes from the crack in the door, begins clomping down the hallway. Stiles listens to him go down the steps, listens as he crosses the foyer, opens the front door, slams it behind himself – while Stiles thumbs at t-shirts and tries to think of one that looks the most like him. 

The fabrics feel different underneath his fingers. Like his skin doesn't recognize the feel of his own clothes anymore. He ignores the fact that he used to have a freckle in the web between his thumb and index finger that's vanished, purses his lips as he rips a gray t-shirt off a hanger and ignores how it stretches out around the shoulders, like he's broader, now. 

It's just two small things on the very, very long list of things he's been ignoring, lately. 

When he pulls into the school parking lot and starts walking up the front steps, when he enters the dim hallways teeming with people, he expects everyone to stop and stare. He expects it to be like the movies when the new kid shows up for their first day; with whispering and prolonged stares and jokes made at his expense, everyone wondering who this person is that's wandered into their school acting like he belongs here. 

Who this _thing_ is. 

Instead, he gets a couple of _hey Stiles'_ and small smiles, or otherwise, no one even notices him. Of course none of them know. Most people don't know. None of them have any idea whatsoever that there's something wrong here, while Stiles feels like it's written all over his face in neon glowing letters, and Stiles feels like there's still blood dripping off of his fingertips. 

Classes are classes. Teachers talk and Stiles sits behind Scott (who dutifully pretends like everything that happened the last time they saw each other _never_ happened, giving him a smile that doesn't reach his eyes, mentions something about lacrosse season starting soon) and no one else pays him any mind. There are a few sly glances given specifically to Scott in a way that suggests most people are trying to think of something to say about Allison, offer some condolence that means nothing but sounds sincere coming out. 

In the end, no one says a word. Stiles likes it better that way. 

When it comes time for lunch, Stiles seriously considers taking his brown paper bag (with the hastily made peanut butter and jelly, one apple) and hunkering down in the boy's bathroom to eat all by himself, away from eyes and whispers and talking and screams, but he reminds himself that that sort of behavior is never going to convince anyone that he's getting any better. 

He spots Scott and Kira underneath a tree in the courtyard, talking quietly with one another and eating slowly at the food they brought; Scott rips at the grass along their feet and Kira watches as she chews. It feels private and Stiles doesn't want to be an intruder, so he gives them a half wave and keeps walking by without looking to see if they return it or even acknowledge him. 

After that, he finds himself standing there looking at the globs of people spread out along the grass and picnic tables, wondering what friends he even has left. Isaac is nowhere in sight, and Stiles wouldn't have sat with him anyway – it's not like they hate each other, and it's not like they have serious personal problems, but they don't get along. And he doesn't strike Stiles as being particularly sympathetic. Maybe it's shitty to think that everyone should be walking on egg shells around him, and maybe it's selfish to think that he deserves to be spoken to nicely and not treated like an invalid; but if he can avoid it, for his own mental health, he'll do just that. 

Which really leaves only Lydia. She's not hard to pick out of the crowd with her fiery red hair, textbook laid out in front of her on the stone table she's commandeered all to herself. It's bizarre to see her sitting like that on her own, especially when remembering how she always used to be surrounded by at least three people at all times. She used to have Jackson, and she used to have Aiden, and she used to have Allison, and a legion of insignificant little friends that would follow her around and listen to her every word. 

Now, she sits alone and makes a big show out of focusing on her math textbook. As if she's so busy and doesn't need someone to be sitting there with her. 

Stiles approaches her table as slow as he can without drawing attention to himself, gripping onto his paper bag, twisting his fingers along the gritty texture of it, waiting for a papercut to come. 

He drops his bag down onto the table with a thump from his apple, slides the straps of his backpack down to shuck it down onto the ground beside the table, sits down on the stone seat waiting for him; through it all, Lydia doesn't give any indication that she's heard him. She doesn't look up. Doesn't say a word. Just bends her head down even more over her book, tightens her grip on the pencil in her hand. 

Stiles crinkles his bag open. Takes the apple out and holds it in his hands. Doesn't take a bite. 

Silence stretches on, so uncomfortable that Stiles thinks he should've just hidden away in the bathroom after all. He squints into the sunlight, casts his eyes all along the courtyard and watches as other people have normal conversations about their normal lives, turns the apple around in his hand over and over and over, when finally - 

“You know,” Lydia begins, dropping her pencil down onto her notebook but not looking up at Stiles just yet, “Scott and Kira are right over there.” 

Stiles freezes his fingers and lets the apple drop onto the table. The sound it makes – it sounds like the way a hit sounds, a fist connecting with someone's chest, or face, and he curls his fingers tight into his palms and tries not to think about it. “They seemed -” he starts, and his voice is scratchy, too low, it's always too low these days. “...I just didn't want to -”

“What?” She asks, interrupting him in her chilly tone. “You just didn't want to – bother them?” One manicured finger points down at the work she has laid out in front of her, her lips set down in a hard line. “Do I look like someone you might be _bothering,_ Stiles?” 

Immediately, Stiles is shoving his apple back into his bag, probably squishing the sandwich he wasn't going to eat anyway down into inedible mush. His hands are shaking as he grips the bag tight in his fist, leans down to pick his backpack up from the dirty ground, sling one strap over his shoulder. He rises from the table and curses himself for being so fucking stupid as to think for even a fraction of a second that Lydia would want to see his face ever again – this face – the same one that kidnapped her, tormented her for hours, and hours, and - 

“Stiles,” her voice rings out, much clearer than she had spoken before, louder – Stiles freezes in place, halfway out from behind the bench. She runs a hand through her hair and squints up to look at Stiles, but...not in the eyes. “Just not now.” 

Clipped and terse and awkward, barely a full sentence at all, yet Stiles understands perfectly. She just can't look at Stiles, not now. The wound is still fresh and oozing plasma and blood and Allison's dead body might as well be lying in between them. An insurmountable blockade between whatever it is that Lydia and Stiles ever had together; what camaraderie they once shared. 

“I'm just having a hard time,” she says this carefully, staring directly at Stiles' neck and nowhere else, “in separating. You. From – it just looks the same.” 

There are as good as two Stiles' standing here in front of her all over again, even with his double long gone. Having to reconcile the boy who waxed poetic about her long hair and green eyes, who followed her around like a lost puppy for years and years, with the boy who tormented her and killed her best friend – that can't be easy. Stiles knows that she feels sorry for him, and even more so feels sorry that she just can't look him in the fucking eyes anymore, can't just go back and wrap her arms around Stiles for whatever comfort she might be able to the find there. But not sorry enough to try any harder than clipped responses and avoidance. Stiles understands. 

That boy that she knew is long gone. He doesn't know what he has to offer her anymore, and clearly she doesn't know either. 

Stiles decides that's about enough reunion time for the day; grips on more tightly to his backpack strap and walks away with determined steps without saying a word to her, without even looking over his shoulder. God – if it were as simple as looking over his shoulder to see how things used to be. If he could look over his fucking shoulder and see Allison sitting there, alive and there, he'd never face forwards ever again. 

Scott, who probably heard every single word that Lydia just said to him and repeated it verbatim to Kira (whose face is pinched like she's mad at Lydia for being so insensitive and cruel, something that Stiles doesn't think Kira could even for five seconds be), jumps up as soon as Stiles is within close enough distance, comes pattering over with a flash of his eyes in Lydia's direction. 

“Dude, are you okay?” 

And the answer is no, the answer has _been_ no, but all that comes out is “yeah, man, of course,” as he keeps right on walking, almost against his will – and he wonders. How is he supposed to know the difference between himself telling a lie and someone – some _thing_ else – speaking for him, instead?

+

Stiles thinks about giving himself a new name.

He thinks about all the hundreds of people he's been before. He used to be a kid who had two parents and he used to be a kid who shared his pop-tarts with his mother every morning and he used to be in love with Lydia Martin and he used to go running in the mornings and he used to – he used to kill people. He used to like the way that that felt. 

He remembers that feeling as well as he remembers the smell of his mother's perfume. That's what none of them understand, he thinks – that he can't abandon or forget the person who he was, he has to live with that the same way his father lives with an empty space in his bed. 

But he thinks about a new name. Stiles doesn't sound right anymore. He's not Stiles anymore.

+

“Lydia shouldn't have said all that stuff.” 

Stiles drags his hands down his face. “Was she wrong?” 

“She's just upset. You know, we're all – we're all barely hanging on here, and she's – you know how she is.” 

She's cold. Even people close to her feel a gap, a distance, a disconnect. She closes herself off to feeling anything fully out of terror that the emotion will envelope her. Instead, she shoves people away instead of facing the demons that haunt her – tries turning up the music louder and louder so she won't hear what she's meant to. Like if she can drown it out then it won't be real. 

If she can drown Stiles out, she can forget that trauma. Locked in that dark, dank place with a monster wearing Stiles' face, haunted and hunted down, boxed into a corner, having that thing's hands all over her. 

“Was she _wrong_?” 

Scott huffs out a breath. “You know I'm trying to help -”

Stiles rises from the bed and clomps his feet down onto the ground; still wearing his sneakers as he trudges through the heaps of ripped up pages and pictures. He caught Scott glancing down at the ground in the spot where a torn picture of Allison's face had been sitting, caught him clearing his throat and looking pointedly away. “You're not helping me by pretending like everything is fine, here, Scott! News fucking flash, front page, read all the fuck about it – everything, every _single_ thing, is _fucked_.” 

“I am so sick of your attitude,” Scott snarls back, keeping himself planted on the bed, digging his fingers into the sheets as if to keep himself grounded, away from clawing Stiles' throat out of his neck. “You're not the only one who needs help, and I'm – running exhausted over here, wasting all my energy on you!” 

“Good, then,” Stiles snaps, gesturing wildly in the air for a moment. “If I'm such a _waste_ to you -”

“Oh, God, that's not what I _meant_ -”

“...then maybe you should go focus on your girlfriend or Derek fuckin' Hale or your new best friend Isaac -”

“ _New best friend_ , my ass, you -”

“Well at least he's _sane_ , right?” 

Scott sets his jaw tight. 

This is the thousandth fight they've had within the single week that Stiles has been – Christ he doesn't even know how to phrase it anymore. Fuck. This is the thousandth fight they've had since the nogitsune destroyed everything and left them all in its wake. And Stiles wonders how many nasty, horrible things they can say to each other. Surely the inventory would've run out, by now, but every single time they see each other it's like there's something else they've been pushing underneath the rug that they need to get out. 

“You don't talk to me,” and Scott has only said that a million times, “you don't _fucking_ talk to me.”

“Are we talking right now?” Stiles waves his hands around again. “Am I speaking _English_ to you?” 

“You don't _tell me_ anything! Every time we talk it's like I'm not even talking to you, I'm just talking to -” he trails off on a hard note, sets his jaw once more, looks pointedly away from Stiles. 

“Like you're talking to what?” Stiles knows the next words out of Scott's mouth will be killer. He knows they'll be something he doesn't want to hear, doesn't want acknowledged out loud, but he pushes him. Because he does that, now. He pushes. Until something snaps. It might be the only thing he really knows how to do right anymore; pushing people to their breaking points. 

Scott looks up, makes direct eye contact with what was once his best friend, but is now a stranger, and says, “like I'm talking to _it_.” 

He knew it was coming, but the slap stings just as hard as it would have had he not. “ _Like_ you're talking to it,” Stiles repeats hollowly, before letting out a humorless laugh; cold. Empty. Void. “You _are_ talking to _it_ , Scott.”

+

“He's not dealing with it.” 

There's a pause. Someone taps a pen on top of a hard surface. 

“Are _you_ dealing with it?” That's Malia – definitely Malia. Stiles thinks it should be much, much easier to recognize her voice, considering how close he and her got at one point, but...it takes him a second. The truth is, he hardly knows her. 

“I'm trying,” Scott has his frustrated voice on and Stiles imagines he's running his hands through his hair again and again. “I'm trying, and he just – won't. Christ, it's like he's not even _Stiles_ anymore.” 

Another pause. Stiles squeezes his eyes shut and wonders why no one is listening to make sure he's not listening into this; to make sure that he's still asleep like he was when they must've first arrived to harangue the Sheriff about getting Stiles help. 

“You guys are kinda underestimating the – um...toll that this probably has had on him.” Kira, quiet and still a little shy around the group at large; a little shy in sharing what she has to offer to the pack, still unsure where she fits in with them. “I – I'm not a doctor.” 

“None of us are.” Derek. Jesus Christ, is the whole fucking gang down there? Is Stiles going to go downstairs and find the entire Junior class standing in his living room with their hands clasped in front of them, giving him sorry looks as Scott steps forward and says _Stiles...we're all your friends here...we just want to help you...have a seat..._

“...I don't want to make any presumptions.” 

“We're all flying blind here,” and there's Stiles' good old dad. The same guy who can barely stand to be in the same room with his own son for longer than he absolutely has to. Like Stiles can't vividly remember the way it felt to be trapped behind the nogitsune, to have his father look directly at him and say _you're not my son._ “I just wish I had something to go on, here.” 

Silence. Someone clearing their throat. Stiles stays absolutely and perfectly still in his bed, to not alert any of the wolves lurking downstairs that he's awake at all. 

“...just seems a lot like -” huff, sigh, reluctance, “...PTSD.” 

“I think we've all got that at this point,” Scott mutters almost so low that Stiles doesn't catch it. 

“It doesn't work like that,” Malia contends; and fuck if she would know the difference between a symptom and the _real thing_ , after all the time she must've spent in Eichen House listening to whatever doctor ramble on and on about the DSM and criterion and disorders. “You have to meet certain qualifications and – I think -” 

“Intrusive thoughts...flashbacks...nightmares,” Kira offers. The room at large goes quiet, like they're mulling it over. Like they're thinking about how certain phrases, certain words, noises, send Stiles into emotional shut down, gripping his hands tightly, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to go someplace else inside of his own head. “Um...avoidance?” Stiles staying locked up in his room, tearing all the pictures off of his wall that remind him of this, hiding underneath his blankets in spite of the fact that he won't fucking sleep. “Negative mood. Like – not being into the same stuff anymore, not doing what he used to, foggy memories, self-blame...” and right then Scott is probably thinking of the dozens upon dozens of horrible things Stiles has said about himself since this all began (or maybe ended would be a better word for it.) 

“That sounds like Stiles,” his father says. 

The entire room makes varying noises of assent, reluctant. Like having it out there on the table is somehow worse than not knowing at all. 

“It's only been a week or so, so it's not diagnosable,” Malia continues on in her scientific psychological rambling. 

“Clearly he's fucking losing it.” Derek is as tactful as ever, Stiles thinks to himself bitterly. “Psychiatric whatever-the-hell aside, he's clearly not stable.” 

More silence. This time, heavier. 

“Well,” the Sheriff starts, and Stiles winces like he knows what's coming. “I don't know what to do with him, and he's not talking to me -”

“As if he's talking to any of us either.” 

“...and I can't – do anything right by him. I don't know what the Hell I'm doing, what the proper procedure is. So maybe I should – just for a couple of days...” 

Stiles is throwing the covers off of him instantly, scattering out of his bed to come stomping towards his bedroom door. His father doesn't have the super hearing, so he doesn't know that Stiles is coming – he just keeps right on talking, and Stiles hears _into Eichen House_...right as he's throwing open his bedroom door, barreling down the hallway as fast as he can go. 

As he's storming down the steps, he starts yelling. “I am _not_ going back to that fucking place.” 

Chairs scratch against the hardwood in the dining room, feet scuffle, and Stiles rounds the corner to see them all standing there like a bunch of fucking villains in a movie, discussing his life like it's any of their god damn business. 

“I'm not going back there, dad,” for the first time in what feels like weeks, he and his father lock eyes with one another. “I can't go back there. I'm not -”

“Stiles,” Scott, holding his hands out in front of himself, “it's okay.” 

“It's _not_ okay, that's _not_ okay, you don't -”

“It was just a thought,” his father says, putting his hands up exactly like Scott. “Nothing's set in stone here, kid, we were just -” 

“I. _Can't_. Go. _Back there_!” 

The room goes quiet again, until it's just Stiles' heavy breathing, everyone staring at him with huge eyes; except for Derek. Who stands back in the corner with a grimace, taking slow stock of Stiles with his bed head, plaid pajama pants, red sleep shirt. It's just Stiles and his breathing and Stiles thinking about the way everything in that place echoed and the _screaming_ and being locked up inside of a room all night long and – and how lonely it felt there. 

Like everything in the world was on his shoulders, and he alone was the one who had to deal with it all. No help. No friends. No nothing. Just the echoes. 

“We just think,” Scott starts up, moving past a grim-faced Malia to step closer to where Stiles is standing, “that we can't offer you the kind of help that you -”

“Stop saying that,” Stiles warns, voice low. “Stop saying I need help.” Scott just keeps advancing closer, palms out, the complete and total picture of _I come in peace_ , of worrying about what it is Stiles is about to fucking do next. 

“...you _do_ , Stiles.” 

“It would just be a couple of days,” his father pipes up in the background; and that's around when things start going hazy around the edges of Stiles' vision. He jerks backwards, away from Scott, until his back slams into the wall, grabs at his hair, shaking his head back and forth. “Just to talk to someone who actually knows what's going on, here -” 

“I can't...”

“...just two days, Stiles, just -”

Stiles jumps away from the wall, fast enough that Scott is actually startled into backing up and away from him, bumping into Kira on his way back – he jumps forwards and starts advancing on his father. To do what, he isn't quite sure. He's not sure in the moment, and he won't be sure afterwards when everything is all said and done; all he knows is that he's moving quickly, and it must be shocking to see it, from the way Malia and Scott both just stand there watching it happen, even with their super quick reflexes. 

One second Stiles is snarling about _rather die than go back there_ , getting closer and closer to his father, stretching his hand out like he's going to -

And the next, Derek is grabbing him by his upper arms, pushing him back against the wall _hard_ , hard enough that the framed pictures nailed up rattle. He holds him there with one hand against his chest, glowering down into his face. “Stop.” 

Stiles writhes against Derek's grip in spite of the fact that he knows it's fucking useless. Claws at the hand on his chest and tries slamming his palms against Derek to get him off, but nothing works. “You don't understand,” he tries, grabbing at Derek's fingers and trying to pry them off of him. “You don't understand -” 

Derek frowns even more deeply. “Don't understand what, Stiles?”

Stiles ignores the question, soldiering forward in a constant stream of muttering about _can't go back there, I can't do that, please don't do that to me, please don't, don't put me in there, I'll do anything, don't put me_ – until he goes limp. Stops fighting Derek's hand. Stops fighting in general. He drops his arms down to his sides and just breathes; sucking in great big inhales, trying to stop thinking about how that place smelled and how scratchy the sheets were – what it was like to have men hold him down and force a needle into his arms, drag his limp body across the floor like it was nothing. 

“Okay,” Scott starts, looking over at the Sheriff for confirmation. “Let's not – okay. No Eichen House.” 

“No Eichen House,” his father hastily agrees. “I shouldn't have even mentioned it.” 

Derek still has his hand pressed into Stiles' chest; a warm anchor holding him down in place, keeping him from going off the rails, from doing something he would've really really regretted. So when he removes it and takes a step back, letting Stiles' feet back down onto the ground, Stiles can't help but feel a loss. He can't help but feel like he might lose control of himself again at any second, might try and hurt someone again. 

Just because he's hurting doesn't mean he gets to hurt other people. Even he knows that well enough in the state he's in. He guesses that he has Derek to thank for reminding him of that fact, but before Stiles can even get a word out, the wolf is stepping away from him, running a hand through his hair and looking away. 

He couldn't think about it at the time, with so much else going on, with being so focused on himself and his own god damn problems; but when he goes back upstairs to his room after the pack leaves reluctantly, after his father vanishes away into the kitchen to do whatever it is he does these days, he lays in his bed. And he thinks about it. 

_Don't understand what, Stiles?_

It was a selfish, shitty thing for Stiles to say; that Derek wouldn't _understand_. While it's true that Derek has never been possessed by an evil fucking fox and never had a new body created for him by something inherently evil...

…it is true that Derek would know a fucking thing or two about guilt. Derek would know how it feels to lose people, and Derek would know how it feels to feel ultimately responsible. 

Derek might just be the only person who could ever even begin to understand what Stiles is going through with all of this, but like Stiles has done to everyone else so far, he just shucked him off to the side and decided he can forge his own way. He's somehow deluded himself that he can get through this on his own, that he doesn't need Scott or Derek or Eichen House. 

Either he makes it or he doesn't. Truth be told – he doesn't care which way this all ends up anymore. 

Stiles goes to school. 

He shows up every morning exactly on time, sits in the same spot he's always sat in, stares at the back of Scott's head, takes notes, does his homework, does his group activities, does everything that everyone would expect him to do. He starts eating with Kira and Scott every day with the occasional sight of Isaac – who always sits there and gives Stiles long glances like he wants to say something but knows that he probably shouldn't. It's as much as an olive branch as Stiles is likely to ever get – not getting screamed at and beat up and harassed day in and day out by Isaac about how fucked up everything's gotten because of Stiles. It's more than he deserves. But Isaac – he knows a thing or two about the struggle of climbing over a brick wall like that. 

Lydia stays away. From the entire group. And Stiles guesses it might be somewhat of a blessing that it's not just Stiles that she's avoiding, but the whole lot of them; not choosing loneliness over just Stiles, but choosing loneliness over everyone else. Stiles knows that part of the reason she won't come over and talk to them, ever, is because Scott had chewed her out about the things she said to Stiles that one day Stiles tried to talk to her. 

Or, _tried_ to chew her out. From what he's heard from muted conversations between Malia and Kira, Lydia bit back twice as hard as Scott did in that argument. Stiles is glad he never hears the specifics of what was said, because something tells him that he just doesn't want to know what kind of shit she would say about Stiles, now. Some things are better left unheard. 

It's funny how the thought of her hating him would have absolutely fucking crushed him a year or so ago, left him beside himself; that kind of rejection has always been the sort that has left him wounded and irreparable. Now, he just accepts it. 

Like he just accepts everything. Including the way his eyes look in the mirror, the way that scar sometimes burns in the middle of the night, remembering some pain that he never himself actually experienced. 

And they don't really bring up Stiles' declining state of being anymore. Whether it's because he's showing up and living day to day like a normal functioning human being, or because they don't know what to say anymore, or because they'd rather just push it away and away until the problem solves itself, he isn't sure. He doesn't particularly care, either. Whatever they have to tell themselves when he's not around to convince each other that everything's going to be fine eventually, Stiles doesn't fucking care, because he knows better. 

Nothing is ever going to be fine, eventually. He sees no end in sight to the constant nightmares, the lack of sleep, the memories so vivid it's like he's reliving it night after night. This is just who he is, now. 

One day, while Stiles is sitting at his desk running his pen along sheets of paper again and again, having already finished his homework hours ago and feeling desperate for something, anything to occupy his mind so he won't just hop into bed and lay there feeling nothing all over again, Malia walks into his bedroom. 

She looks out of sorts, in here. In her jean shorts and green shirt, wringing her hands and fingers together like she's still not quite sure what to do with them instead of paws, and she doesn't make any noise aside from an awkward clearing of her throat as she sits down on the edge of Stiles' bed. 

Stiles whirls around in his desk chair, crosses his arm over his chest, and stares. Waiting. 

Malia chews on a nail. “So -” she starts, glancing down at her nail beds before running those fingers through her sandy hair. “Scott is always saying, like...we should talk to you.” 

Oh, Stiles bets that Scott has been chirping in everyone's ears trying to get them to talk to him. Since Scott himself doesn't seem to be making any leeway in the Stiles department, he's sent in the back-up crew to do the job for him. Reinforcements. “We talk all the time,” Stiles hedges. “Just this afternoon we were talking.” 

She starts chewing on another nail. “About pickles.” 

Right. What kinds of pickles are the best kind. Crinkle cut? Spears? It's the kind of inane conversational topic they've been busying themselves with lately. “And I'm not changing my vote. Spears all the way; both the condiment _and_ the lady. So if you came here to talk pickle, you're running into a brick wall.” 

Malia gets a bizarre look on her face – scrutinizing. Which, okay. Not really a bizarre look for Malia, considering she always tends to be eyeballing everything she comes into contact with with some level of confusion and bafflement; but it looks a lot more like a Scott expression than a Malia expression. It is specifically the _trying to figure Stiles out_ face. Or the _searching for the real Stiles_ face. “I didn't come to talk – pickle.” The word comes out forced. Like it's ridiculous. “I'm not good at, like – you know. Talking to people. Yet.” 

“Okay,” Stiles agrees. No use in denying that. A few days ago she point blank told Kira that the flower she had put into her hair smelled like dog farts, didn't even blink at the way Kira's face turned bright red. 

“But obviously, or, Scott says that you and I – we should like. You know. Communicate. On a deeper level.” 

“Gee,” Stiles says blandly. “Scott says jump, you say how high, right?” 

Sarcasm breezes over her head like so much water. “It's not about just doing what Scott says, it's about – I think he's kinda right.” 

“Scott is rarely -” 

“If you could stop being an unbelievable asshole for ten seconds,” She cuts him off; and the words are harsh, should be said with a growl or a narrowed eye; but she just says them. Like fact. “...maybe we could get to what I came here for.” 

Stiles inhales deeply, exhales even more deeply. “Maybe _you_ could get to what you came here for, because honestly – I'm at a loss.” 

She runs the palms of her hands down her bare thighs, blinks her eyes a couple of times, and then looks up and makes direct eye contact with Stiles. She cocks her head to the side a little, noticing the discrepancies between Stiles' original eyes and the ones he has now; but she at least doesn't make any kind of tactless comment on it. Which, for her, is progress. “You and I. We had sex.” 

And the tact goes straight out the window, flapping in the wind like a flag on Veteran's Day. Bizarrely, Stiles' cheeks heat up and he looks away. “Christ.” 

“Well! We did!” She juts her hands out in a vague gesture that means nothing to Stiles, nothing whatsoever, and then drops them back down on either side of her thighs on the bed. “No use playing – like – I don't know -”

“Coy,” Stiles offers, and she nods her head enthusiastically. 

“Coy. That's the word. No use in playing coy. I mean, your dick -”

“Okay,” Stiles throws his hands up, uses one to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Let's not get graphic. Yes, okay? Yes. We had sex.” 

“In the basement.” 

Holy fucking God. “Yes. Sex in the basement.” 

“Of a mental institution.” 

“So you're finally human enough to recognize that it was kinda weird,” Stiles leans back farther in his chair and tries to ignore the vicious flame all over his face. It's probably the most physical reaction he's had in weeks, and for the first time in a long while, he feels somewhat...himself. 

“Well I'm not like -” another weird hand gesture, “trying to – put you on the spot or be like _what the hell_ about it or anything. I mean, whatever. It happened. People – do that.” 

“Sure,” Stiles agrees. “Keeps the world a'spinnin.”

“But – that's not.” She adjusts in her place, and Stiles notices that she clearly has a hard time with sitting still; maybe it has something to do with being stuck in a brand new body that she hasn't been used to in a very long time. Stiles would know a thing or two about that restless feeling. “It's not about that we had sex, because it was totally cool. It was, um – mutual?”

“Consensual,” Stiles corrects, and she nods. _That's the word._

“Totally, yes. That's not the issue.” 

Stiles bristles. “So there's an issue.” 

She shoves another nail into her mouth and looks pointedly away. “There's just something I have to ask.” 

Stiles decides to sit quietly and wait for her to explain this herself; even though a creeping feeling that he gets near constantly is telling him that this conversation is going to be fucking horrible. But it's just another one to add to the list of fucking horrible conversations he's had to have; surely this conversation with the god damn were-coyote he banged in a basement can't be as horrible as others he's had. 

“Were you -” a pause. Nail chewing. “How can you be sure that you weren't...” hand gesture. “...were you – _you_?”

Nope. This is it. This is taking the absolute top fucking place. Yeah, there was Allison's funeral which was horrific and traumatizing, and yeah there are the mountains of chill-inducing things that Scott and Stiles have said to each other, and Lydia is another level altogether – but this? Nah. This takes the fucking cake. 

Stiles tightens his arms across his chest, feels his face shutter off the way it always does whenever he's asked to talk about this shit. “Are you _fucking_ kidding me -”

“I just think -”

“Are you seriously asking me – if I was possessed by a _demon_ when I had sex with you?” 

She narrows her eyes. “You _were_ possessed by a demon.” Irrefutable fact. And he knows it. “I chose to go along with it anyway. My question is were you – were you – was there ever a point during where you were...”

Where he was not himself. Was there ever a point during that twenty minute period of time where someone else took over for him, did things to Malia that he...that he wouldn't have done himself. To be honest, the memory of it can get a little foggy sometimes. But he always chalked that up more to the situation he was in, the stress, the constant nagging fear in the back of his head that not even first-time sex could ever cloud over. 

He always chalked it up to that. He never thought...he never thought. He couldn't think like that. 

Because if there was really any time? Any five second period where the nogitsune was the one calling the shots? Then that wasn't consensual. 

“I have a right to ask,” she says defiantly. And she does. She really, truly does. Stiles wouldn't contest that, no matter how anxious, uncomfortable, cagey the question makes him feel. 

Foggy memory. Things with the nogitsune were always foggy. “I can't be sure,” he says evenly back. He wasn't sure then, and hasn't been sure, not since – not since. Never since. The truth is that Malia hasn't touched this body, hasn't been near it; the person that she had sex with, the body that she had sex with, that she let inside of her, that wasn't this one. In the most literal sense, he's still a virgin. He doesn't think that that would make Malia feel any better. 

She sucks in a breath and nods her head, and she's got this look on her face like she doesn't like it, not one bit. But what else could she expect? 

Stiles shifts in his seat. Looks away from her. God this is fucking horrible. “Was there – for you? Did you feel like...”

Malia bites her lip, glares at her hands. “I wouldn't be asking if there wasn't a moment that's made me question it, Stiles.” 

And that's – Stiles slaps his hands onto his face, runs them up and down, again and again. It's too much for him to think about. It's so fucking disgusting, so horrible a thought, that he wants to empty his stomach out all over the floor. Malia either can't sense this, isn't paying attention to Stiles' heartbeat or his emotions, or she just doesn't fucking care, because she keeps. Talking. 

“...just the way you would look at me at some points -” God, holy fucking God, this is - “...I didn't know it at the time, but looking at you now. That's not how you look at people.” 

“Fucking ten minutes later I was tying you to a chair,” Stiles mutters under his breath, hands still pressed against his eyes like he's hoping he can block all of this out. “Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention, Malia. Thank you for the _fucking_ information.” 

“I didn't mean it to be -” she stutters, finally realizing that Stiles is going a bit off the deep end right in front of her fucking eyes, no clue what to do about it. “I wasn't trying to -”

“What did you think this would accomplish?” He demands, ripping his hands off his face and staring at her, with his weird eyes. “You thought you could waltz in here and remind me that my body was pretty much just _used_ to -”

“That's not how I think of it,” she contests in a loud voice, cutting him off effectively, standing up off the bed to point at him. “Don't, Stiles. Don't – don't think like that.” 

“Can't help it,” he shakes his head. And he can't. He can't stop thinking about it, now. God, how he wishes he could take that back; he wishes he had made smarter decisions, but he wasn't in a position to be making good decisions. That was not the time or the place for that, not at all. But he needed...he needed...

He just needed someone. And Malia – Malia was the same. And in that vein, he guesses that they both took advantage of each other, and it was wrong. It was wrong even without the nogitsune taking anything over, it was wrong, and he shouldn't have done it. He should've stopped it before it got out of hand. 

He – he would've stopped it. 

If he were in control of himself. If it were entirely him without any hints of the nogitsune, he would've stopped it. 

But he didn't. And so, point blank, it wasn't him. 

The knowledge is paralyzing. 

“I shouldn't have.” Malia says this very matter-of-factly. “I should not have brought this up. Scott was -”

“Wrong,” Stiles says for her. “But you were right. You deserved to know.” With a grim, bitter smile, he finishes it off with, “and now you know.” 

How great it is to add _rape on technicality_ to his fucking repertoire of things to keep him awake at night. For the first time, the new body feels like a fucking blessing instead of a curse. This isn't the body that did that. He doesn't feel phantoms of Malia's fingers on him, on his skin, doesn't quite remember what it was like to touch her like that. 

A blessing. A curse. What's even the difference anymore?

+

Hearing weird noises in his bedroom in the middle of the night has started to feel pretty commonplace to Stiles. On the edges of sleep, in between dream and wake, nightmare and reality, he's learned to hear rustling and footsteps and just ignore it. It's probably his imagination either way. 

So color him surprised when there's a hand shaking him awake, a murmured, “Stiles. Wake up.” 

He half expects to flip over and find his double staring back at him, leering, really, come back to claim what rightfully belongs to him. 

Instead, he sees glowing blue eyes in the darkness. 

“Derek?” He rasps out, squinting. The blue eyes blink, and then jostle a bit in the air. A nod. “What the – turn my fucking light on.” 

The eyes fade, footsteps, Stiles sitting all the way up in bed and rubbing at his sleep heavy eyes, and then the light is on with a click. 

Stiles glares at Derek as he adjusts to the light, frowning and scowling and every horrid facial expression he can think to make. They haven't seen each other since Derek had to physically restrain Stiles from trying to fight his own father, so he thinks it should be a little awkward in the air between them. But, it's not like Derek and Stiles ever get awkward with one another; it's just sarcasm and eye rolls and wall-up-against shoving. Which is probably one thing about Derek that makes him sort of...easy. He doesn't beat around the bush like everyone else. “You know – I don't sleep much.” 

“I know that.” Derek pulls his jacket tight around his body for a second, and then releases it. Lets it drop back down around his chest and stomach. 

“So I don't appreciate being woken up in the rare times I actually get sleep,” he curls his fingers into his quilt. “As you can imagine.” 

Derek gives him a blank look. “Do you think I'd be barging in here in the middle of the night if it weren't important?” 

“I think you'd barge anywhere you felt like for no reason whatsoever,” Stiles waves a hand in the air and sighs. “You just like to _barge_.” 

With an eye-roll heavenwards, like he's searching for the strength from a deity to not claw Stiles to death, he huffs out a breath. “I'm not just barging this time.”

“So you bring news, then,” Stiles hisses. “Oh, joy. How I _love_ your reports, Derek. What is it this time? Have _you_ come to ask me about my wonderful time locked inside my own head?” 

There's a second where all Derek does is level his eyes back down and stares at Stiles; a real full body sweep of as much that isn't covered by his sheets and blankets as possible. Stiles is used to this look, with this body, so he just shrugs it off and stares back, unimpressed.

Derek takes a single step forward, calves almost hitting the end of Stiles' bed. “How can you tell the difference between a dream and – not?” 

The question takes Stiles enough by surprise that he blinks, rearing his neck back and cocking his head to the side with a screwed up facial expression. “Huh?” 

Another step forward, so the bed jostles, Stiles dropping his hands down onto the mattress in confusion. “Lately. I don't know,” he trails his eyes to the wall where Stiles' crime solving mess used to be, scans over the blankness of it, the few shreds of paper still taped up there, and frowns. “When something that can't possibly be real happens...”

The words hang there in the silence, so Stiles clears his throat. “Like finding out werewolves were real.” 

Derek meets his eyes. “Like someone long dead come back, more like.” 

This perks Stiles right up. Well. Maybe _perks_ isn't a good word for hearing something that fucking bone chilling – maybe _startles_ him into a more awake state, into listening a little bit harder to what he's saying instead of just thinking about when he can lay back down on his pillow again. 

“Something that can't possibly be true, but...it might be.” 

“It might be,” Stiles repeats dully. Suddenly it makes a lot of sense why Derek is bursting in here like this; specifically Stiles' bedroom and not anyone else's, even though the two of them are definitely on much rockier ground. Stiles is kinda on rocky ground with everyone, these days – but, of course, Stiles is the one who would know the most about dreams and _not_. “What are you getting at here, Derek? Because – and coming from me this is huge because at this point, I've seen it all – you're sort of _freaking me out._ ” 

Derek rounds the bed, clomping on the floor loudly with his big feet and coming closer to where Stiles is sitting. On instinct, Stiles rears back a bit into his headboard, frowning and shaking his head. “Werewolves, kanimas, nogitsunes,” Derek says, counting them off on his fingers, “the willing suspension of disbelief is –“

“Already pretty suspended,” Stiles offers, “yeah. Okay. Impossible is now possible, right on. So...?” 

“You ever wonder -” he stops himself, shakes his head like he can't believe he's about to say this, “...there has to be a limit on what's possible, right?” 

Stiles clears his throat. He doesn't think he really believes in the impossible anymore, honestly. After everything he's seen, done, been through, after all the people he's seen die or leave just to get the Hell away from this fucking place... “there's no limit.” 

Derek meets his eyes once again. Doesn't flinch away from the yellow ring. “There's not. Is there.” And he says it like he was hoping that Stiles would be some condolence to him, offer him support, say something like _aw, buddy, come on, that can't be possible!_ But Derek should've known better. Stiles as he is now – he's come to expect the worst. He's at a point where he sleeps with his baseball bat wedged underneath his pillow, always waiting for the next thing to come and steal another one of his friends away. 

Always waiting to wake up and not be himself anymore. 

“What are we talking about, here?” Stiles asks. “Why – why did you ask me how to tell the difference between a dream and reality?” 

Derek scrubs a hand down his face and snuffles out a sigh, runs his fingers through his hair, looks out the window into Stiles' backyard. 

Stiles figures he should say something first. “In dreams you have extra fingers.” 

Without even a breath of a pause, Derek is reaching his hand out and grabbing onto Stiles' where it rests on the mattress, shoving it up into the air in front of his face. Stiles wiggles his five fingers easily, watches as Derek slides his eyes across each one individually, making sure they're all there and accounted for without any extras.

When he's finished, he drops the hand down and runs his own shakily through his hair. “I'm awake. _Fuck_ , I'm awake, I'm -”

“Derek,” Stiles says slowly, “what did you see?” 

There's a pause, where Derek does little more than stare out the window and shake his head back and forth, back and forth, where Stiles just stares at the profile of his face with huge eyes, the most scared and freaked out he's been since he crawled up out of a pile of bandages on the ground with a brand new body he didn't feel right in. 

Then, Derek sighs. “Kate Argent,” he says easily, in spite of the fact that saying that name must be like swallowing glass to him. “She's back.” 

“She's back,” Stiles repeats. “A ghost?” 

“Fucking phantom from a nightmare,” Derek says back. “I kept thinking, you know – it can't be. Because she's – she was...dead. She was fucking dead, I watched her bleed out on the floor, I watched Peter claw her fucking throat out.” 

Stiles shakes his head. “You watched Peter scratch her throat,” he corrects quietly. “With his alpha claws.” And, as some people have learned the hard way, you can get turned from a scratch. It's not surprising to Stiles, not at all. It doesn't even really phase him to think that Kate has been faking her way through the obituaries all this time, living off the coast of Mexico somewhere reigning in her brand new wolf abilities. Fuck. Stiles was _possessed by a fox_. As if _this_ is going to shock him at all. 

But Derek looks genuinely rattled, genuinely _petrified_ , and Stiles doesn't think this is the time to start bringing up his own personal fucking issues. 

Derek looks at him again, searches his face. “I knew you'd know.” 

It's a weird thing to say in this moment, Stiles thinks, but he says it so honestly. A statement of fact, as if the only reason he came over here was not just because Stiles understands dreams better than anyone else in the gang, but because Stiles...would know. Instantly. 

He's the one who always figures it out right? Stiles swallows and doesn't mention that that's not really him anymore, sliding his eyes nervously to the empty wall where proof of that used to hang. 

“So. Okay,” Stiles says, shifting slightly closer to the edge of the bed where Derek is standing. “Kate – back in town. Is it – I mean...I guess it's too much to hope that she's just here to tie up loose ends, or something...” 

Another careful, long look at Stiles that says a lot more than Derek is willing to put out. “She _is_ here to tie up loose ends. Just not with a pretty little bow. And I'm calling a pack meeting,” he walks away from Stiles' bed, towards the open bedroom window that he must've climbed up through. Stiles honestly is getting a little tired of that song and dance he's always pulling; there's a front fuckin' door and it's not like his dad is all in the dark about this shit anymore. “My house. First thing in the morning.” 

“Um,” Stiles begins, running a hand through his bed head. Derek pauses at the window, one hand resting on the sill. “I don't – yeah. That's not – not doing that.” 

Derek's eyebrows bunch. “Not doing what?” 

Stiles waves his hand in the air noncommittally. “The whole Avenger's Assemble thing? We alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness? I'm not – no.” 

“No.” The word repeated sounds harsh. 

“No.” Stiles shakes his head resolutely. “I don't want part in that. Anymore.” 

The werewolf gives him a look that suggests he thinks Stiles has grown an extra head, staring at him for so long Stiles begins to feel uncomfortable underneath his gaze, shrinking back a bit into his pillows. “Don't you think,” Derek begins, his voice calm, “you're in too deep, now, to just back out like that?” 

"It's not backing out,” Stiles says back in a small voice. “It's – I just can't do that.” 

“You know you're a member of the pack,” he lifts his hand off the sill and turns his body back around to face Stiles, narrowing his eyes. “Human or not -” or not, Stiles thinks. Or _not_ , anymore. “...we need you.” 

Stiles hacks out a laugh. “ _Need_ me? Give me a fuckin' break.” 

This reaction apparently pisses Derek off. He jerks his neck back, and then whirls around to look at the wall just behind him, all the pieces of tape and empty cork boards, setting his jaw. “Is that what this is all about then?” He gestures to the bareness, a quick sweep of his arm. 

Stiles looks away, doesn't say anything. 

Derek continues on. “Don't be such a fucking martyr, Stiles -”

“Me?” Stiles looks back instantly, eyes wide, a sarcastic smile spreading across his face. “ _Me_ the martyr? _Me_ the fucking _martyr_? That is a delicious morsel of _bullshit_ , coming from you!” 

“Things are still happening, Stiles,” Derek shoots back, ignoring Stiles' attempts at baiting him, “You think that just because you're – whatever the hell is the matter with you – that everything is just going to _stop_? That you can turn your back on all of it?” 

“That's not -”

“Kate Argent, murdering psycho, now apparently has the power to _shapeshift_ ,” he takes a step closer to Stiles, and just like before, Stiles rears backwards on his bed, tangling his legs up in the sheets. “And you want to hide in your bed and pretend it's not happening, just because you're -”

“That's not me anymore,” Stiles cuts him off, unable to sit here and listen to this fucking lecture. “I can't do that anymore.” 

“That's what you _do_ ,” Derek snaps and points a finger at him. “That's who you _are_.” 

“ _No_!” Stiles' shout is so loud that it bounces off the walls of his small bedroom, so loud that Derek jerks back and frowns. “No. You hear me? That's not who I am that's – that's who I was. Maybe you haven't fucking noticed, Derek, but this,” he holds his hands out to gesture to himself, his body, the body, “is not the fucking same.” 

Derek's lips part in surprise. It's the first time that Stiles has ever really directly said it to anyone; and he wonders if his friends have all sat around and debated over this. It's hard not to notice it, he knows that they've noticed, thought about it, but have they had those fucked up Scooby Gang round table discussions about him? Sitting around and musing over how Stiles' eyes are fucked up, how he's missing freckles, the fucked up scar. 

The off-smell. _Death_ , Scott had said. 

If they have, then Derek is probably shocked that Stiles has pointed it out himself. Knowing Scott, he's probably very emphatically told the pack time and time again not to bring it up. It'll send Stiles off into crazy PTSD-land where he tries to fight his dad all over again, so let's not go _there_. 

But Stiles has gone there, and Derek seems at a loss for words. 

“Yeah,” Stiles hisses, pulling his sheets up higher around himself. “ _Yeah_. So, no. I don't fucking do that shit anymore. _This_ body -”

“Your body,” Derek corrects in a murmur. 

Stiles fixes him with a dark look. “Fuck you.” 

With those final parting words, Derek glows his blue eyes in Stiles' direction, puts his hand back on the windowsill, and says, “be there.” Before jumping out the window and vanishing into the darkness. 

Stiles does not go. Of course he doesn't – when was the last time he actually listened to a direct order from Derek Hale? Never. Literally never once. The sheer amount of times that Stiles has directly disobeyed him, as a matter of fact, is so astronomical that Stiles is amazed Derek even fucking bothers with trying to tell him what to do anymore.

Even more amazing than that is that Derek continues to get pissy about it. 

It is literally no surprise whatsoever when Scott comes barging in through his bedroom door on Saturday afternoon, glaring at Stiles the same way he's been doing a lot more often these days, frowning and frothing at the god damn mouth in barely restrained agitation. Stiles knows he's really been given a grace period to act like – well, to act like _this_ , because they all think he's in need of some serious TLC or whatever the fuck is needed to get over something like this, and if they weren't all so suspicious that he's got a serious mental disorder, then they'd probably be a lot harsher on him. Scott would be dragging him against his will over to Derek's loft right now if it were any other situation. 

As it is, he's the Local Looney Toon according to popular opinion, so Scott just glares. 

For a second it's a staring match. It's not really like Scott has to announce why he's here, and it's really not like Stiles doesn't know he's about to get a verbal lashing of varying degree (depending on just how much Derek chewed Scott out for not getting Stiles to come), so they just...stare. 

Scott and Stiles fighting about how Stiles is losing his god damn mind : round 4958594. 

“You,” Scott begins, jabbing a finger in the air, “are my best friend.” 

An interesting way to start the discussion. Stiles nods, slowly. 

“And Derek told me everything you said to him last night.” 

Oh, great...this should be one fuck-off of a conversation. Stiles twirls in his desk chair, slowly, back around to face his laptop; he only gets so far as to lay his fingers across the keyboard to start typing in another google search for pictures of ladybugs or whatever the hell he feels like, before Scott is grabbing onto the back of his chair and yanking him backwards. 

The wheels _squeeakk_ against the floor and Stiles flails. “Hey!” 

“No,” Scott hisses. “I'm done playing games with you – obviously walking on eggshells around you isn't fucking working anymore,” he spins the chair back around to face him, keeps his hands firmly in place on either side of Stiles' shoulders so he can't roll himself away, and frowns. “It's time for some tough love.” 

_Tough love._ Stiles half expects Scott to backhand him clean across the fucking face. “I already told Derek that I wasn't doing this shit anymore,” he hisses, crossing his arms over his chest. “That's my closing statement.” 

Scott glares even harder. “You realize that this is serious.” 

“Of course. It's all so _serious_ with Derek.” Stiles lowers his voice, looks away from Scott to mutter under his breath. “...since he's so full of himself....” 

“Oh, when are you two going to just -” Scott pauses – stops. Grits his teeth, shakes his head. Doesn't finish whatever he was going to say, and instead goes off on a different topic. “I mean, Kate Argent being back is serious.” 

“I don't see how I fit in.” 

“The same you've always fit in,” Scott snaps back into his face, and Stiles cowers a little. “The same way you've fit in since the beginning of everything, Stiles!”

Stiles opens his mouth to retort, but Scott cuts him off. 

“And don't give me the same jazz you gave Derek. About how you're all so – different now, or you're not _you_ or whatever you were babbling about -”

“ _Babbling about_ ,” Stiles repeats, raising his eyes to the sky. “Since I'm so nuts, I just babble incoherently now, is that what you all say about me?” 

Scott ignores the goading, trail blazes right on through to continue on his rant. “I don't care that this isn't the same body.” Stiles jerks, tries to twist himself away to get out of Scott's grip, but Scott just boxes him in even more, keeping him there in place, trapped. “Hey. Listen to me. Look into my eyes.” 

Stiles doesn't. He stares pointedly down at the ground, arms crossed, jaw set tight and wobbling with unshed tears. 

“Stiles.” When he still doesn't turn to look at him, Scott lifts one hand from the back of the chair and uses his fingers to grab onto Stiles' chin, to turn it to look into the wolf's face. Whatever Scott sees there has his face softening, his eyebrows smoothing back out into something that looks less like anger or annoyance and more like honesty. “I don't. Care. Whatever body you're in, it doesn't change you.” 

Stiles blinks his eyes rapidly, trying to stave off the tears uselessly – they come spilling down his cheeks either way. “This isn't the same person that you knew,” he says in a rasp, his throat tight around the words. 

“Yes, it is,” and he says it so easily, like it's just – just _that_ simple. If he can say it so easily, then why can't Stiles just believe it? “It is. I know that you're – you're in pain.” At this, he squats down, lowering himself so that he has to look upwards at Stiles instead of staring down at him – it changes the entire tone of the conversation from anger to calm. “Nobody is trying to ignore the fact that you're in pain, here, Stiles.” 

_In pain_. It sounds so basic. As if everything, everything that he's gone through, everything that he's done, can just be boiled down into a simple statement of fact like that. Scott, and the rest of them – they don't know the fucking beginnings of it. 

“But you're a member of the pack. My pack. And we need you in this thing, with us, because – it's serious, Stiles.” 

Stiles swipes his thumb across his face to get rid of the residual tears, and sniffles. There's not a single bone in his body that genuinely believes he's the same as he was before all this; he just couldn't be. He knows that. It is a statement of fact that he used to be Stiles Stilinski and he used to have a body that he lived seventeen years with, and now he's not and he's got something else that he's walking around in. This is irrefutable. 

But with the way Scott says it. With the way he looks so earnest staring up at him like that, like he's never meant anything more than this...

Scott has always, always had a face that makes it hard to say no to. And if Scott really wants Stiles to show up at Derek's loft and talk shop like he always used to, get out a highlighter and point to a map and do whatever the fuck it is that Derek and Scott think is so god damn important, then fine. He can play the role. If it gets everyone off his back for ten seconds, fine. 

Stiles sniffles once more, and then says, “how serious are we talking.” 

A small smile crosses Scott's face, barely there and then gone. “Serious, Stiles.” 

“Okay, but -”

“Peter Hale revenge killing spree levels.” 

Stiles knits his eyebrows together, shakes his head in confusion. “Revenge?” 

Scott looks away from Stiles' eyes, rising up into a standing position. For a second it looks like he's gearing up to say something really devastating, to drop a huge bomb on Stiles' shoulders – the way he holds himself so tightly, wound up, nervous. Then, he sags his shoulders and shakes his head before scratching a little at his face. “Allison, Stiles.” 

Stiles blinks, and his heart sinks into his chest. “Oh.” Of course. 

Kate Argent probably had every single intention of staying hidden on the other side of the planet – far, far away from the Argent code, living in secrecy, killing squirrels and the like for sport. Living out of a tin can somewhere. Stiles would've been a-okay with that alternate reality, so long as he never had to deal with her ever again. They never had much one on one, he and Kate, but he does vividly remember the woman brainwashing Allison into shooting Scott up with arrows and that's – you know. Best friend code. 

And he also vividly remembers the fact that Kate once burned down an entire house comprised mostly of children. So. Basic human decency code. 

The only reason she's probably back in Beacon Hills, now, lurking all over Derek and making the poor wolf feel like he's going crazy, is because of Allison. She caught wind of Allison's death, freaked the fuck out, and has now gone down the same road that Peter Hale once went down. Stiles guesses the only good thing about all this is that Kate isn't an alpha. Most likely. That he knows of. 

God, he fucking hopes that Kate isn't an alpha. 

“What is she doing, though?” Stiles demands. “I mean – is she living out of a warehouse, or...”

Scott gets quiet again, with that same facial expression like he's debating whether or not to admit something out loud to Stiles. “Out of a car, I think. She's got this pack of – bony looking guys with huge muscles, a whole fuckload of guns, and she's pissed off.” 

Stiles' face sours. “Serious,” he agrees. And Scott nods. 

Another cryptic look crosses Scott's face, this one even more suspicious than the last – Scott has never been a great secret keeper, but it looks like he's trying really really hard to keep this one, whatever it is. Probably some top secret Derek Hale whatever-the-hell; and, where before, not knowing something that like would've absolutely driven Stiles crazy. Like, to the point of breaking into Scott's bedroom to sift through all his shit to get to the truth. 

Now, Stiles fights off the urge and lets it slide. 

“Hey,” Scott begins in a forced cheery tone, “how about you stay at my house tonight?” 

Stiles gives him a quizzical look. “A sleepover?” 

“Yeah!” More fake cheer. 

“Um...” Stiles thinks about the fact that he hasn't slept through the night in weeks, thinks about the way he still sometimes wakes up screaming, thinks about how the absolute last thing he wants to do is to let Scott see exactly how much _not better_ he's doing, these days. 

Before Stiles has a chance to say any of this, Scott is grabbing Stiles' backpack off the ground and walking over to this drawers, pulling out pajamas and loading them into the bag. When Scott decides on something, he tends to hyper decide; there's no arguing his way out of this one. So Stiles just sighs, stands up and hobbles into his bathroom to ziplock his toothpaste and toothbrush into a baggy. 

At Scott's house, there's a weird energy. They do all the stuff they would normally do, if this were a year ago and they were still pretending like they had normal lives; video games, movies, a game of go-fish. The biggest differences, however, are that Stiles doesn't much feel like talking even though he used to be the one carrying the brunt of their conversations on a night like this, and Scott isn't talking much either because he's in a weird state of Alpha Alert Mode. 

He'll pause in the middle of a bite of pizza, freeze, and just...listen. After two seconds, he goes back to eating his pizza. Stiles picks at his own slice and manages a handful of bites before shoving it away from him on the coffee table to focus on half heartedly watching Pitch Perfect (there was nothing else in Scott's collection and Melissa is apparently a fan). Scott notices Stiles' disinterest in his food, frowns, but doesn't comment on it.

Stiles wonders how huge the list is in his mind, of things he doesn't comment on where Stiles is concerned. He doesn't comment on the specific changes in his body, doesn't comment on the things Stiles will or won't say, doesn't comment on how, really, Scott knows fucking nothing about what it was like to be possessed by the nogitsune because Stiles won't tell him. Scott just sits there and observes, files it away for later when he thinks that Stiles will be able to handle a conversation like that.

But Stiles is seriously starting to doubt that he'll ever, ever be able to handle that kind of conversation. Ever. Time moves so strangely, and wounds heal too oddly. There's no set healing process. Stiles doesn't just have a chart to look at – to add up all the things that have happened to him like a personality quiz in a teenage girl's magazine for a score that'll tell him exactly how many months it's going to take him to even resemble a flicker of his old self. 

It's been two weeks. But Stiles feels like it's been years. _Years_ since he pulled himself up out of the floor. 

Stiles eyeballs the space on the floor between the couch and the coffee table that he crawled out of, and feels like trying to jump back inside of it, somehow. Get out of here, away from Scott and Kate Argent and Derek and Malia and Lydia – just run without ever looking back. 

But Stiles, the real one, he wouldn't do that. No. Stiles would stay until the bitter end. 

Halfway through the movie, Stiles notices something moving in the window out of the corner of his eye, turns his head and sees – well. He thinks he sees...or saw, would be a better word for it, since he ducked out Stiles' line of sight the second he turned his head. 

“Um.” 

Scott turns to him with an innocent look on his face. 

“Did I just see -” he points at the window, squints, “...Derek Hale peering in at us through the window like a peeping tom?” 

Scott swallows a bite of pizza like he's buying himself time to explain himself, and Stiles' eyes narrow. 

Fed up with waiting, he just shouts, “Derek!” at the top of his lungs, loud enough that Scott squints against the volume and nearly chokes on his pizza in surprise. “I know you're out there!” 

There are a couple of moments – Scott swallowing his pizza after choking and coughing around it, Scott starting to say something about _now hang on a minute_ , Stiles standing up from the couch and glaring out the window again – and then Derek is waltzing in through the front door unannounced, not even bothering to look sheepish about it whatsoever. 

“What -” Stiles begins, shaking his head, “the _hell_ , dude?” 

“Stealth, huh?” Scott says, raising his eyebrows at the other wolf in the room. “ _Super_ stealth.” It sounds a lot like Scott and Derek had had a conversation at some point earlier in the day, where Derek insisted that he did, indeed, have stealth enough to lurk around outside the McCall house without being caught. 

Derek puts his hands on his hips, stares at Stiles for a second, and then looks to Scott with a frown. “I was just – outside.” 

“Yeah,” Stiles agrees slowly, nodding his head. “You sure were, pal. Now how about why?” 

Scott and Derek exchange a look. Somehow in their crackpot plan to do whatever the Hell this is they've got going on, they never decided on what to say if they wound up actually getting caught. Which explains why Stiles had stopped letting them make the plans long ago. 

They both start talking at the same time – Scott says _see the thing is_...and Derek says _securing the – perimeter – woods_...and Stiles stares at them both, back and forth, blinking with a frown on his face. 

“Why do I feel like...” he starts, shaking his head, “you didn't just invite me over for a sleepover.” 

Scott frowns and stares down at what's left of his pizza, and Derek just stands there awkwardly in the middle of the living room, hovering like he doesn't really belong here. 

“Well,” Scott clears his throat, dropping his pizza down onto the paper plate and dumping it next to Stiles' on the coffee table. “With Kate running rampant – we just thought it best that you not be left alone.” 

Stiles purses his lips and looks at them both individually once more. “You're not telling me something.” 

Derek sighs. “ _I'm not the same anymore, Derek,_ ” he parrots in a babyish voice – _that's_ supposed to be Stiles? Which is pretty fucking funny since, between the two of them, Stiles is the one with the deeper voice. “Seem pretty much exactly the same to me.” 

“So you admit it,” Stiles narrows his eyes and points a finger in Scott's direction. “There's something you're hiding from me!” 

“No!” Scott insists, giving Derek a death glare until the beta puts his hands up and backs away from the situation. “Well - hiding the fact that you're – um...” he trails off, looking for the right words. “...not in a place where you can really protect yourself.” 

Stiles rolls that around inside of his brain. Yes he's a little shaky and no he doesn't particularly like the thought of having to engage in a physical fight any time soon, but he's really no worse off than he was before all of this. It's not like he's handicapped or wounded or anything; in fact, he's pretty sure this body might be...stronger than the one he had before. It's not like he's spent a lot of time trying to test that theory out. He's been ignoring it. Like everything else, of course. “Why didn't you just say that?” 

Another long look between Scott and Derek. 

“Because you've always been so _open_ to the idea of being treated like the fragile pack human, Stiles,” Derek hisses sarcastically with a roll of his eyes. “It doesn't matter either way. Are you going to put up a fight about this?” 

There have been a dozen times where Stiles has lashed out at the idea of being, as Derek says, the _fragile pack human_. He's never liked feeling useless, and he's never liked feeling as though he was this little tiny puppy that needed protecting at all times. He found it completely demoralizing and set out to prove that he was more than that. 

Looking at it now, all he can think about is how much he wants to sleep without having to worry about Kate Argent bursting in to use him as leverage against the pack. Which is, quite clearly, what Scott and Derek think is going to happen. And Derek might be shitty at planning, and shitty at attack strategies, but one thing he's eerily good at is predicting shit like that. He knows Kate better than anyone else left in the pack, now, so if anyone would be sure about her motives...

“No,” Stiles says back, sitting back down on the couch cushions and reaching for the remote. “Stop lurking outside in the shadows like a creep, though. Watch Pitch Perfect.” 

Derek's face sours again as he looks at the screen – while Scott just shrugs his shoulders and leans back into his own section of the couch, pizza back in hand. For a second, Derek just stands there as awkward as ever, tense and gazing around himself at the relatively unfamiliar surroundings, before he sighs and steps forward to plant himself on the easy chair closest to Stiles; frowning at the television screen and glancing out the window every so often. 

An hour and a half and a new movie later, Scott is fast asleep and snoring in his spot next to Stiles, toes digging into Stiles' thigh every time he shifts in his sleep, and it's just Derek and Stiles sitting in the dark with the television flickering across their faces. 

Derek keeps shooting Stiles anxious glances, looking out the window, barely paying attention to the new movie they'd put on (the title of which Stiles doesn't even remember, at this point). Even Stiles, the stupid human, can tell that he's on edge about something. 

So, unable to stand it anymore, he turns and looks Derek in the face with a frown. “Is there something on your mind?” 

Derek huffs. “Aside from Kate Argent? Not really.” 

“Yeah,” Stiles says slowly, taking in the way Derek's entire body is locked in tension, how even though he's sitting in an incredibly comfortable chair he's not leaning back into the cushions at all. Just sitting ramrod straight and glaring all around himself. On edge. “Think I can tell the difference between vigilant Derek and -” he wags his finger up and down in Derek's direction, “whatever-this-is Derek.” 

“I'm just tired.” 

“Mmm,” Stiles hums, “let's start a club.” 

Another few minutes tick by with the two of them sitting there, and Derek doesn't move on inch. Out the window, to the profile of Stiles' face, briefly to the movie, back out the window. Again and again in perfect succession. It starts honestly driving Stiles up the fucking wall, so he slams his hand down on the armrest of the couch and turns on Derek once more. “Seriously. What is the _fucking_ issue?”

Derek looks back at him. His face looks so pale in the glow from the TV, the lines of his frown more defined, like this. He looks just as good as he always has, really, and Stiles tries to not think about being attracted to Derek Hale at a time like this. “I don't want to make you uncomfortable.” 

“Well that's a fuckin' weird thing to say,” Stiles snorts, rolling his eyes. “Especially since you've succeeded in making me uncomfortable pretty much every day since we've met, but -”

“Stiles.” It's different from the growl, or the slamming of a wall he'd normally get for saying something like that. “C'mon.” 

“What? C'mon _what_?” 

“Just watch the movie. I'm fine.” 

Stiles taps his fingers on the armrest and tries to ignore the wolf to the best of his abilities. The reality is, he doesn’t even know the name of the main character in this fucking film, doesn't even know what's going on within the plot; and it's really hard to focus on that when there's a much more interesting and much more mysterious werewolf sitting five feet away from him.

He turns again, and Derek sighs through his nose before Stiles even speaks. “I just want to know why -”

“Again,” Derek snaps his fingers and glares into Stiles' eyes. “You say you're not the same, but – there you fucking go, acting just like yourself.” 

Stiles bristles. “Oh, right. Because you _know me_ so fucking well, don't you?” 

“Better than you seem to think,” he mutters under his breath in response, and Stiles gets even more incensed. He twists his entire body around in his seat, jostling Scott (who sleeps like fucking death and doesn't even pause in his snores), and leaning over the armrest to glare at Derek across from him. 

“Pushing me up against walls, shoving my head into steering wheels,” he shrugs his shoulders, glares, “some real heart to hearts we've had!” 

Derek leans forward in his own seat, so that the distance between the two of them goes from five feet to four, at most. “Holding me up in eight feet of water when I was paralyzed, nearly cutting my arm off for me to save my life. Doesn't seem so fucking _shallow_ to me, Stiles.” 

Stiles blinks. He didn't think Derek had cared much about those times, at all. Didn't think the wolf thought about them, even; enough near death experiences and they all sorta start to blend into one, right? But Derek had that locked and loaded, ready to go, like he _has_ thought about them. 

And thought about them quite a bit. It strikes Stiles as odd, out of character – but Derek's facial expression doesn't change from serious and honest, and Stiles doesn't know what to make out of all of this. 

“Don't act like we don't know each other,” he continues on in a low voice, turning his body back around so he can glare out the window. “You and I have seen and done too much side by side to pretend like we're strangers.” 

He might be right about that. “Then, if we're not strangers,” Stiles murmurs, staring at the side of Derek's face, at the frown, “why don't you tell me what it is that's got you so wound up?” 

Derek starts jiggling his leg up and down – another thing that strikes Stiles as out of character – and keeps staring out the window pointedly. Enough time passes like this that Stiles turns away and mutters under his breath in annoyance, focusing back in on whatever hero he's supposed to be giving a shit about in this idiotic movie; and then Derek clears his throat. 

“It's – your scent.” 

Stiles' heart sinks. Deep, deep down into the pit of his stomach. And he doesn't know why it bothers him specifically that Derek is bringing it up, that Derek is mentioning it at all – that Derek has noticed. But it does. It's worse than what Scott said the first time Stiles had asked him. “Yeah,” he rasps out quietly, clenching his hands into fists on top of his thighs and trying not to have another episode. “Like death.” 

“What?” Derek demands, genuinely looking startled. “Like _death_?” 

Stiles side-eyes him. Clenches his fists tighter. “That's what Scott said.” 

There's a moment of quiet, and then Derek is growling under his breath. “No. That's not what it is, Stiles. You – your scent is still your scent. The body – _your_ body, it has a particular scent that's different, yes, but it's not...bad. It's barely noticeable.” 

Stiles doesn't quite believe him. He keeps his eyes trained on the television and focuses on the beating of his heart, the rush of blood flowing through his veins. 

“That's not what I was referring to either way,” Derek continues. “It's not you, it's – you smell like – hurt.” 

That gives Stiles some pause. He turns his head just slightly, just enough to look at Derek with both eyes and frown. 

“Misery,” Derek clarifies very quietly, “in specific.” 

Stiles swallows thickly, staring at Derek and feeling suddenly like he's out of his element. “Well. I'm miserable.” 

Derek's face shutters, and he looks defeated in that moment – absolutely fucking wrecked. As if he's never in his life heard anything worse than Stiles saying that he's miserable, like Stiles has just fucking delivered him a death blow, somehow. “I can't stand that.” 

And Stiles doesn't know what to say to that. Doesn't even know where to begin to decipher what's being said here, what's in between the lines, what it all means. So he just turns right back to the movie, and lets the rest of the night pass in relative silence, until he dozes off somewhere around three in the morning, too exhausted to do anything else. 

Kate does not wind up storming into the McCall house to drag Stiles out and make an example of him for the pack. When he wakes up, Derek is gone, and Melissa is in the kitchen making coffee, freshly home from her night shift at the hospital. 

Stiles sits at the table with the McCalls and drinks his coffee. There are a million and one things for him to think about, a million and one things to get caught up in – from that earth-shattering conversation he had with Malia, to Allison Argent, to the nogitsune, to the way his fingers feel too long around the mug he's holding in his hands – and yet the one thing he chooses to focus on this morning is the way Derek had talked to him last night. 

All the things that he said. That Stiles' new body doesn't smell _bad_ just imperceptibly _different_. That Stiles and Derek have no right treating each other like strangers after all that the two of them have been through and seen together. 

That Derek hates how Stiles reeks of misery. Hates that Stiles is miserable at all. 

It's a weird way to start a Sunday. Completely enraptured in thoughts of Derek Hale, of all things and people. Weird enough that he quickly tries to avert his thoughts to something else entirely – like the fact that Kate Argent is, apparently though Stiles has yet to see any actual physical proof, still at large and prowling around Beacon Hills with some sort of deformed revenge pact to settle. 

Scott isn't okay with just sending Stiles off on his merry way for him to go home and hide underneath his blankets as is customary for him on a weekend, because apparently the alpha is still weirdly protective and suspicious of something happening to Stiles. So he spends his day bumming around in Scott's bedroom, listening to Scott prattle on about this that or the other thing. 

Because Scott is, actually, handling every thing about a billion times better than Stiles is. Scott is in the same two week mark that Stiles is currently in – only two weeks since Allison's death – and Scott can actually think about and talk about something else. Has actually started smiling genuinely instead of just that fake one he doles out, that never quite reaches his eyes. Time is passing for him, moving along, and he has Kira, and he has the pack, and his mom and he's still...Scott. 

Stiles isn't quite sure what he is. Stuck, maybe. Trapped. 

“You know,” Scott says at one point, screwing around with some paper clips he fished out of his desk while Stiles sits cross legged on the ground in the middle of the room. “I think Derek is lonely.” 

Stiles raises his eyebrows, looks up from drawing patterns into the carpet with his finger tips. “Boyd and Erica died within months of each other,” he mutters. “I'd be lonely too.” 

“He still has Isaac,” Scott offers lamely. 

“Who he threw out on his ass.” 

“And then let him move back in after -” he pauses, clears his throat. Not so _over it_ after all. “...pack solidarity and all.” 

Stiles rubs at his eyes. Doesn't know what Scott is fucking getting at. “Well, then, if he has Isaac, why are you even bringing it up?” 

Scott frowns and plays with his paper clips some more. “That's the thing. I don't know. He always talks like _we're a pack blah blah_ -” Scott's Derek voice consists of droopy eyes and a slight undertone of growl, “but then he kinda – never tells us anything. Everything is some huge secret with him, and he's constantly going off on his own. _Pack_ my butt.” 

Christ. One thing Stiles sort of doesn't miss about being in on all the typical pack meetings and pack going's on is the fucking drama. People always talk about how high school girls and their cliques are so dramatic and all that, but, really? Some television executive could make a fucking killing off a show called _The Pack_ where they just follow Scott and Derek and the rest of the gang around with cameras and film everything that happens. And not even the fucking fighting or the supernatural whatevers – just them interacting and having their little dramas all the time. It could literally be the next Jersey Shore. 

“He's private,” Stiles offers. “I don't know. He's Derek. Sourwolf and all.” 

“Ha!” Scott chortles out of nowhere, startling Stiles into looking up from his carpet pattern. “Man. You haven't said that in a long time.” 

Huh. Stiles guesses that he really hasn't. Scott is giving him a really specific look – smile and calculating eyes, and it makes Stiles feel like a creature in the zoo behind plexiglass, so he looks away, back down onto the ground. 

They're just about to start playing video games when Scott pauses in the middle of announcing all the new ones he's gotten since the last time Stiles had come over, his eyes going far away, towards his closed bedroom door. Stiles follows his eye line, turns his head, says, _what_? 

Scott looks down at him, frowns, and says, “Lydia.” 

Stiles gets a lump in his throat. The only reason any werewolf ever pauses in the middle of doing something and says _Lydia_ is if something bad is about to happen.

Or, something bad has _already_ happened. 

Within the time that it takes Scott to straighten back up to his full height, for Stiles to run his hands up and down his face in his classic _aw, fucking shit_ move, Lydia makes it inside of Scott's house. Even Stiles can hear her voice, shrill in the foyer, drifting up the stairs as she frantically asks Melissa way more times than is probably necessary _Stiles, where's Stiles, is Stiles here_?

Scott furrows his brow, makes a move to walk to his bedroom door as footsteps start coming up the staircase, down the hallway. Right as he's pulling the door open, Lydia is outside of it, slamming past Scott into the room and zeroing her wide green eyes in on where Stiles is camped out on the floor. 

“Um,” he starts. 

Lydia breathes out a sigh of relief, putting her hand over her heart like it's beating too fast and she's trying to slow it down now that whatever threat she imagined Stiles would be under isn't an issue. At least, not yet. “Jesus Christ,” she puffs, before dropping her forehead down into her hand. 

“What is it?” Scott asks her, leaving his bedroom door open for his mother to stick her head in to see what all the commotion is about. “Did you hear something?” 

Lydia lifts her head back up and sets her eyes on Stiles again – the first time she's really looked at him in weeks – before turning back to look at Scott. “I was running water for a bath,” she begins explaining, her voice still painted with a touch of hysteria. “And I heard – glass shattering.” She gets that far away look on her face that she always gets whenever she starts talking about the things that she hears; like she's imagining the scene in her head all over again, imagining a window breaking, or a glass falling out of somebody's hands. “And I felt like...Stiles was in trouble.” 

All three other pairs of eyes in the room turn to look at Stiles sitting on the floor, and all Stiles can do is stare back at them and sigh through his nose. 

“Welp,” he says, scratching absentmindedly at his cheek. “Stiles is in trouble. Must be that time of the month.” 

Stiles doesn't get the time to sit around musing about how Lydia clearly cares enough about him to fly into a panic at the thought of him being in mortal danger – how at least she'd give a shit if he wound up dead on the side of the road. It's a nice thought. But he doesn't have time. 

Scott shoves Stiles into the passenger seat of his car and drives him off to Derek's loft, Lydia in the backseat, talking a mile a minute about _pack meeting_ and _everyone together_ and _don't let him out of our sight_. Stiles is more or less a rag doll for Scott to commandeer, dragging him through the parking lot and into the elevator, shifting his eyes all around in every direction like he honestly expects some unseen evil to leap out from the shadows and scoop Stiles out of his hands the second he lets his guard down. 

It's a little much. Yes, Lydia's feelings have a very strong tendency to be correct – but all she really heard was glass shattering. For all anyone really knows, she just has a very strong indication that Stiles is going to be accidentally dropping a light bulb at some point in the near future. 

It only gets more dramatic when they arrive in Derek's loft, and the gang's already all gathered, looking worried and tense and like they, too, expect a bomb to go off at any second. 

“What took you so long?” Derek demands haughtily, scanning his eyes up and down Stiles' person like he's searching for any injuries he might've procured in the ten minutes since Scott's phone call. 

“Some of us follow speed limits,” Scott shoots back with a glare, finally dropping his hand off of Stiles' shoulder. Kira approaches them, fixes her eyes specifically on Scott, but gives Stiles a few check over glances, as well – before putting her hand on Scott's upper arm and frowning. 

“Things are getting bad,” she says to him quietly. 

“How bad?” Lydia asks. 

“Dead bodies bad,” Isaac rises from his spot on the couch as he says this, shrugging. “Well – dead bodies _ripped to pieces_ bad, but. You get the idea.” 

Stiles' eyes widen, and he looks around the room. He catches Malia's gaze, and his gut twists painfully like he's about to fucking throw up – they both look away instantly, uncomfortable with each other after the last conversation they had. He doesn't think he'll ever, ever be able to look at Malia without having a _visceral reaction_. Like the way Malia had said guilt made her feel when they were in Eichen House together. That's the feeling. “Ripped to pieces?” 

“Limbs torn off,” Derek admits it like it causes him physical pain to think about. “Arranged to spell something out.” 

It goes quiet for a moment. No one really wants to ask the obvious question, like they're all too petrified of what it's going to be all about this time. Just like when Derek was in his bedroom that first night that he came in and asked Stiles the difference between dream and reality – kanimas, werewolves, nogitsunes. 

And there's just no _limit_ , not a single limit, to how fucking horrible things can get. 

Scott is the one who chooses to bite the bullet, in the end. “What did it say?” 

Everyone in the room who already knows the answer – Kira, Isaac, Derek, Malia – they all look pointedly downwards at the floor, or shift uncomfortably in their spot, or just set their jaws. 

“Stiles,” Derek says, finally, in a strained voice. “It said _Stiles_.” 

Stiles takes a second to let that sink in. While Scott freaks out and demands to see a picture, because apparently there's pictures, while Isaac pulls his phone out like _here you wanna fuckin' see this shit??_ , while Lydia starts pacing back and forth across the concrete floors of the loft, muttering under her breath about voices and whispers, Stiles just stands there. 

Even if there's nothing set in concrete yet, he has enough common sense to figure that if Lydia has a feeling that something bad is going to happen to Stiles, and if someone purposefully ripped apart an entire group of people just to spell out his name in their body parts (how many arms and legs does it take to spell out his own fucking name? How many internal organs, how many...), then that must mean that something or someone else has come for him. Specifically. 

He wishes he could say that he's surprised. But he's not, though, he's really and truly _not_ surprised by any of this. Around him he senses panic and dismay, worry and anxiety rolling all around the loft in waves so thick that even Stiles as a human can sense it; thick enough to slice a hole through. 

It makes a lot of sense, now, why Derek and Scott were so insistent on watching over him, why it still seemed like there was something they weren't telling him. How when Stiles asked Scott why Kate felt the need to get revenge in the first place, he had said _Allison_. It's obvious - Kate blames Stiles implicitly for Allison's death, and she wants him dead in order to fucking avenge her. 

_Join the club_ , Stiles thinks bitterly. 

Stiles thinks _more people are dying because of me. More people have already died because of me_. He thinks about snake venom and how long it takes for each species and each type to kill a human being – if the nogitsune was _venom_ inside of Stiles, then how much longer is it until he just drops dead under the weight of the traces of the toxins running through his veins?

Suddenly it's just like it was before, and suddenly he feels like he's going to claw his flesh off of his bones, because this can't be fucking happening again.

This _can't_ be happening again. 

Stiles did not stagger away from all of that like crawling up out of the rubble of a fucking explosion, burned and battered and nearly dead, just to be dragged back to ground zero all over again. It can't be put into _words_ how it feels to look around and see innocent people dying because of _him._

No one should ever have to go through that once. But twice? _Twice_? 

Somewhere in the middle of the all this, a hand wraps around his arm, shaking him a bit as if to rouse him from sleep – he looks up to see Derek staring at him with a concerned expression on his face. “Hey,” he says, voice oddly soft. “Are you all right?” 

Stiles thinks about blood all over his hands, and he wonders how Derek can't _see_ that, now. How they're all worrying about Stiles, what they're going to do about Stiles, how they're going to _save_ Stiles, when it should be...

When it should be how they're going to get _rid_ of Stiles.

He forces a smile onto his face. A thin-lipped, toothless smile. “I'm just thinking it's a good thing they didn't try to spell out my real name,” he shrugs his shoulders and tries to go for nonchalant, bats Derek's hand off of his arm like swatting a fly. “Because _that_ would've been at least another ten arms and legs.” 

Derek gives him a look that Stiles can't identify, and he doesn't spend the time trying to analyze it. “What's the matter with you?” And it's said so – strangely. Quiet and desperate, almost. Like he's _begging_ instead of asking. Searching. 

“The million dollar question,” Stiles mutters back, dodging around Derek to where Scott is standing and staring wide-eyed at the screen on Isaac's phone. He decides that he's not particularly interested in looking at the picture itself, seeing as how his imagination (his memories, really) of mangled bodies is more than enough for him to paint the image in his own head. 

Scott looks up and thrusts the phone back into Isaac's hand as soon as he sees Stiles approaching. He swallows heavily, runs a hand through his hair, looks like he's just seen a fucking ghost. “Is this Kate?” He asks. 

Derek is still standing exactly where Stiles left him, looking paralyzed to the spot. “Yeah. Yeah, Kate.” 

“So she really is targeting the weakest fucking link,” Stiles jazz hands for a moment, and the entire room gives him what quantifies as a look of confusion. “Shocker!” There are hints of hysteria in his voice. Everyone hears that loud and clear, can obviously see that he's about to leap off yet another deep end; and since Stiles has been diving to the bottom of the ocean on a non-stop constant loop for weeks now, not a single one of them thinks they can spare the time to deal with it anymore. 

“Is he going to start being weird again?” Isaac asks, pointing one bony finger in Stiles' direction. “Because dealing with Stiles is one thing, but dealing with _this_ ,” another finger jab, “is another.” 

“Isaac,” Scott warns, giving Stiles a nervous look. But Stiles just stands there and blinks placidly in Isaac's direction, thinks about how Allison always thought he was so _brave_. Stiles isn't sure just how much of that is left behind, now, in the wake. “This isn't the fucking time. It doesn't matter either way, we have to – we have to get Stiles out of here.” 

“There's really no place to take him,” Derek intones, casting another unreadable look in Stiles' direction. “If Kate really has as much firepower as she's acting like -”

“She and her goons ripped an entire room full of people into pieces,” Kira cuts him off in a quiet voice. “I think it's pretty safe to assume she's not bluffing.” 

Everyone looks at each other. _Plan_ , they're all thinking, _does anyone have a fucking plan_?

Lydia used to be pretty good at the whole _planning_ thing, but ever since she's started honing in on her abilities a bit more (or, really, ever since she got them at all), she's been more about the screaming and the threatening messages than she's been about coming up with something to actually _do_ in the wake of one of her feelings. While Derek and Scott and Isaac all sat around like _gee golly, what should we do, hmmm what should we do_ , Stiles was usually the one actually doing something about it all. 

As for right now, he just sort of stands there and fiddles with the collar on his shirt.

No one else offers up anything else. It's like the white flag is already slowly rising up the pole, here. 

Scott curses and grabs onto Stiles' arm, dragging him off towards the huge metal door of the loft while rumbling under his breath about this, that, or the other thing. Stiles goes along with it, glancing over his shoulder as the rest of the pack steps forwards with confusion written all over their faces. 

“Hey, whoa,” Malia starts, holding her hand out like she's going to try and stop them. “Where are you -”

“I've just gotta get him out of here,” Scott snarls back, gripping on even tighter to Stiles as if premeditating someone's move to try and take him away. 

“To go _where_ , Scott?” Lydia gestures in a way that suggests that this simple motion encapsulates the entirety of Beacon Hills, the endless stretches of forest, the highway, the main street. “There's nowhere to _go_.” 

“I'm not just going to stand around here, waiting for Kate to burst through the door, am I?” He rears around to glare at the rest of their friends. “The only options I see are fight or flight and I don't know about you – but the latter is seeming really, _really_ good to me right about now.” 

“ _That's_ the plan?” Isaac spits out sarcastically over a worried looking Kira's head. “You take Stiles and vanish, and leave the rest of us here?” 

Scott sets his jaw like he doesn't want to admit that that is, really and truly, _The Plan_. Which really speaks to just how catastrophically fucking awful the plan is – that even Scott can see the huge, gaping issues with it. Every single flaw isn't just a technicality, it's all huge and neon and blinking in everyone's faces like a sign in Las Vegas – a slot machine yelling out _THIS! IS! A! HORRIBLE! IDEA!_

“If Kate finds you, then there's no chance in Hell you're going to be able to stop her,” Derek looks at Stiles for a fraction of a second, then fixes back on Scott with wide eyes. “Just you alone with -”

“Skinny,” Stiles cuts him off, and Derek turns to look at him with a narrowed eye. “Pale. Defenseless. Stiles.” They share eye contact in the silence that follows this, and in between them a thousand words gone unspoken flutter around in the air, waiting for one of them to reach out and grab, start a classic Stiles and Derek snappy repartee bickering match. “Is that about the size of it?” 

“That's not who I see right now,” Derek counters, taking a step closer as if to get right into Stiles' face – but Scott angles him backwards, thrusts his shoulder in front of Stiles and sets his jaw. “ _Stiles_ wouldn't have ever acted like this -”

“What happened to _you're just the same as always, Stiles_?” 

“... _Stiles_ would have fucking stayed here with his pack!” 

Scott starts saying something, probably along the lines of _come on, now's not the time for an argument_ , but Stiles can only think about how unbelievably wrong that Derek is. Derek is still thinking like Stiles should be ripping his red pen out to start jotting down tactics, to drag a wad of red yarn out from his pocket and start using it to make sense out of all of this. 

He's more or less forgotten the most important character trait Stiles has. All of them, apparently, have – if not a single one of them can figure out why Stiles would be so willing to just go along with this. 

Stiles wraps fingers around Scott's arm, pulling him towards the door ten feet behind them, effectively silencing whatever _don't fight_ tirade he was in the middle of. “We're going.” 

Derek stands there and gapes. He doesn't know where to begin with Stiles, anymore, none of them do. Stiles doesn't act the way he used to, and Stiles doesn't say the things he used to, and Stiles has a new body, and Stiles treats everyone around him like complete and utter trash for no other reason than it's the only thing he can think of to get that ugliness out of him. 

It's left all of his friends standing there in headlights, caught. Bracing for impact since they all know that Stiles has been a crash waiting to happen since the day he dragged himself out of the ground.

Scott moves along, casting a wary glance at Derek and everyone else individually as he walks beside Stiles. In Scott's face, and in Derek's face, he can see plain as day that neither of them think this is the right thing to do. Maybe somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, Stiles knows that it's not right for him to do this, either; it's not _right_ for him to make a decision without letting his friends in on what his real endgame with all this is. 

Sometimes there is no _right_ and there is no _wrong._ There's only what you've got, what you have to work with, what you have to _do_ ; and that pill burns just as bad going down as it's gonna when it comes right back up. 

The truth is, Stiles knows exactly what he's doing. Scott doesn't. In Scott's mind, and in Derek's, they're just running for their fucking lives. 

In Stiles' mind...

“You're _insane_ to do this!” Derek shouts at their retreating backs, echoing along the hallways of the building as the metal door hangs wide open, as Scott and Stiles move their ways towards the elevator, far, far away from this entire discussion and this entire situation. “I will _never_ fucking forgive you if he dies, do you hear me?” 

The door slams closed behind them, and after that, silence. 

Logistics. 

Red and yellow and green strings on a cork board. Photographic evidence. A map with locations circled and pinpointed. 

Stiles used to have that shit lined up in his head like a grocery list or the lyrics to a song; memorized and recalled as often as he needed it. In that vein, he understands perfectly how a plan works and how to connect the dots to formulate one solid thing out of a handful of separate parts. How things fit together and, ultimately, how they fall apart. In a way, Stiles guesses that he's become his own set of separate parts, now, but the problem is he can't make sense or get them all together inside of himself anymore. Maybe the nogitsune scattered him and made something that used to be simple incredibly difficult, instead. 

Inside his mind, he can see that pair of scissors dug deep into his mattress, red strings taut and long – each of them representing some different tiny part of him, leading down to the same exact point. 

What's the one thing about him that's always been true? What's the one thing about him that, no matter what, he'll always stand by? What makes him _him_? Where does he converge? 

The drive to protect his friends is something the nogitsune tried to rip out of his hands, but Stiles clung to it like a lifeline. No matter what, he held onto that – and he knows that he failed with Allison, he _knows_ that. God, does he know that. 

But like the ocean always creates waves to crash down on top of one another, Stiles always rises back up from the ground, wounded but _alive_ , with the same exact goal.

Scott sits in the driver's seat, staring blankly out at the empty parking lot in front of them. Stiles sits beside him and nervously fingers along the strap of his seatbelt, shifting in his seat again and again, adjusting himself, turning around to glare up at the window of Derek's loft with a grimace, then to the lights in the lot, then at the woods beyond it all. Restless. Anxious. 

“Where are we gonna go?” Stiles asks. 

Scott blinks. Shoves his key into the ignition, revs the engine, guns it with a screech. But he doesn't say anything – not a single word. There's really nothing to be said anymore. Not at this point. Life and death is something that he and Scott have become very well acquainted with these past couple of years, but there's just one thing about it that he doesn't think they'll ever be able to truly get used to. 

That in between. The running, and the planning, and the wondering. Quiet anxiety and furtive glances. 

“The woods,” Stiles finally offers with a snap of his fingers. Scott side eyes him as the needle on the speedometer moves up, and up, and up...

“That's a horrible idea,” he says back in a quiet but firm voice, dodging his way through whatever traffic evening time in Beacon Hills has to offer on a Sunday. 

“I don't know if you got the memo,” Stiles turns to stare out the window, “but _horrible ideas_ are just sorta what we're working with nowadays.” 

“The woods are the very first place she'll come looking for us, Stiles. Obviously.” 

“Or,” he counters, fiddling some more with his seat belt, tapping his feet against the floor of the car, “she'd think that _we'd_ think it's the first place she'd look, so she'd predict us being smart enough not to be there.” 

Scott turns to look at him for just a second. One second. A couple of streetlights flash across his face, headlights shine into both of their eyes, and Stiles can see the gears turning in his head as each individual millisecond passes. It's the _Stiles is making a lot of sense right now_ face. Stiles has still got that old expression memorized right down to the crease between his brows. 

_Oh, Scott,_ Stiles thinks with just the barest hint of remorse. It scares Stiles just how easy it is for him to manipulate his best friend like this, to get him playing into his hands like putty or clay. Scott has never known what to really do, has always looked to Stiles for the answers – and here Stiles is, giving him an answer. It's all he can do to go along with it. 

Stiles thinks, for just one fraction of a second, that he should take it back. Say _keep driving get on the highway, go to Nevada._

“Yeah,” Scott agrees slowly, nodding firmly once. “Yeah, okay.” 

Stiles leans back in his seat. Stares dead ahead. 

He knows he's won. Funny how it feels so much more like losing. 

The thing is, Stiles and Scott don't even make it to the woods. One thing they hadn't really thought about, much, was the sheer fact that Kate would already be on their trail. It wasn't a search, it never was. It wasn't even a _hunt_. 

It was a chase. A trap, even. Drag Stiles away from the pack at large, freak the whole gang out enough with the prospect of the pack human getting eaten alive, that they'd all assume the best thing would be to separate him from the ranks, operating under the assumption that Kate would find the pack first. It's where Stiles belongs, according to some. She'd get sidetracked chasing the pack around, while Stiles was already vanishing into the shadows, disappearing before she could get her bony hands on him to play out her little game of revenge. 

That's not really how she thinks, though.

Stiles knew the entire time that he was playing directly into her hands. He's the one who always figures it out, right? It's possible that he had her pegged from the second he heard that it was _his_ name written in blood and flesh in the middle of a parking lot on the other side of town – and it's just solid fact that when he got into Scott's car and let himself be taken away from his only possible source of protection, he knew what he was doing. 

Right as they're about to turn off onto the dirt road leading out into the preserve, something leaps out into the middle of the road, and Scott hits the brakes too soon, too hard, sending them sliding off the road; tail end of Scott's shitty car slamming so hard into a tree that Stiles' entire body, his _bones_ fucking vibrate on impact. 

It should've been enough to knock him out. Maybe if he had been knocked out, unconscious, then _maybe_ -

Instead, he stays wide awake, experiences every single second of it with as much of a level head as one person can have after getting shaken up like that. Which is one thing no one ever says about the aftermath of a wreck. 

That shaky feeling. No matter how pressing everything else going on around you is, it's impossible to _process_ it for at least a solid minute. 

Scott unbuckles Stiles' seat belt, shouting something that Stiles isn't comprehending and doesn't care about, really. Like a zombie, Stiles throws open the door, steps out onto the forest floor on legs made out of jelly, pulling himself up and out of the car with a ringing in his ears and breaths coming out like a puffs of smoke into the cool night air. He even takes the time to shut the door behind him. As if it fucking matters. 

Scott is grabbing onto his shoulders, his upper arm, his hand. And it's urgent, so fucking _important_ that Stiles moves, runs, _starts_ – but instead, Stiles looks around himself and tries to see exactly what it is they're running from, who's coming for them, _what's_ coming for them. Scott has certainly already seen it. 

From the look in his eyes. The way his claws are digging into his best friend's palm. Stiles just knows that Scott's seen something. 

When Scott starts running, Stiles has no choice but to be dragged along behind him with a lurch – the upper half of his body being pulled before the bottom half, so his shaking legs go out from under him and he nearly trips and falls. Scott manages to haul him up and keep going, while behind them there's a low growl. Something mixed with a cat purring and a hellbeast screeching. Stiles can feel as Scott's claws dig deeper into his flesh as he tries to get Stiles to fucking go faster, feels fresh blood dripping.

Every single survival instinct that Stiles has naturally as a human being is screaming at him to keep running as fast as his legs can possibly take him. His nerves ache with the desire to sprint, to speed up enough to catch up with Scott's supernatural abilities, to _go_ , get away from the heavy footfalls that are dropping so hard onto the forest floor behind them that it sounds like they're being chased by an actual honest to God boulder with legs. 

Every thing in him is saying _don't turn around, don't turn around, don't turn around. Get out of here. You're going to die if you can't get out of here._

But, see, Stiles spent an entire month having nightmares about being trapped in a locker, locked inside his bedroom unable to pry the door open, banging and banging and begging to be let out. 

There was no _getting out_ that time, either. Stiles gets a sensation like warm water being poured down as his back as he lets the realization that he's going to die flood over his skin. He's going to die, and with his last dying breath he's going to tell Scott to keep running. Scott can get out of this in one piece, and they'll think of a better plan to deal with Kate as soon as Stiles is out of their way. 

Stiles has been slowing them down and fucking them over now, for a very long time. Too long. And in a lot of ways he guesses that this is overdue; he never should've climbed out of the floor to begin with. It's a mistake that he's here at all, in this body that no one recognizes and no one wants to really be around. He should've died back then, along with the nogitsune. Cracked open like a China doll, pieces scattered into ash. Maybe if he had, Allison would still be alive. 

Stiles lurches to a stop so hard that his arm gets ripped out of its socket by Scott still trying to pull him along with him. It's not Scott's fault, really; he's scared and freaked out enough that he's not thinking about how much strength he's using to drag Stiles alongside him like that. 

He falls forward, tumbles down into the dirt and twigs and underbrush. His arm hurts so bad that he can't even make a noise about it – the tears spring to his eyes instantaneously and the arm dangles limply to his side where he's kneeling in the dirt, knees of his jeans soaking through quickly with the damp ground beneath him. Scott is running so fast that when he tries to stop as well, he skids a solid ten feet, _crrunnching_ through the dead earth and flailing his arms around in the air to slow himself. 

“ _Stiles,_ ” he chastises, but Stiles is already pulling himself up with his good arm, letting the other hang uselessly. Rising to a hunched standing position, he turns away from Scott – towards what's coming for him through the branches of the forest.

It's not far away – it's twenty feet, at most, and advancing faster than Stiles ever thought anything outside of an actual car with astronomical horsepower could fucking move. There's maybe six seconds of Scott trying to get to him before the other thing does, shouting _what are you doing!?_ , and Stiles stepping forward like he's walking the fucking plank. 

Two different sets of feet pound towards him, something moves in the dark forest out of the corner of his eye, and Stiles goes blank. Kinda like the way it felt to drift downwards in that tub of ice cold water, to be held down by Lydia's hands; not the part where his body had the automatic reaction to attempt to save itself from drowning, not the thrashing or the burning cold or the desperation.

But the part after that. Quiet. Still. Scott's feet behind him like the heartbeat in his own ears and his own blood rushing through his veins. 

Six seconds. 

By all counts, the thing should've snapped his neck the second it got its hands on him. And it most likely would have, if it hadn't been for Scott distracting it for just enough time. All it can do at first is pick Stiles up as easily as picking up a toddler, and then shuck Scott off with its other arm. The werewolf goes careening into the nearest tree with a thump and some rustling of leaves, and then it's just Stiles staring down at – well. It. 

Huge fucking dude with weird bones and animals furs and what looks like deer blood all over him. Why not, right? Makes total fucking sense for Stiles' life up to this point. Taken down by a caveman – why fucking not? 

Scott is back on his feet instantly, and Stiles is being growled at with putrid breath fogging up in the air as he dangles a good two feet in mid-air, feet dangling limply. “Stiles, do something!” 

Stiles does nothing. The thing holding him up cocks its head to the side like its inspecting him for a quick second, making sure that it's found the right target, that it's doing its intended job accurately and well. 

Another attempt by Scott to claw at its huge arm, the one that's holding Stiles up by the collar of his shirt. Fruitless, and useless. It just swats him away again, ignores his roaring and growling for the more interesting task of wrapping a hand around Stiles' neck and squeezing. 

Unlike when Stiles was submerged into water months ago, he doesn't try to fight back. His hands don't instantly come up to scrabble and claw at the one trying to choke him to death, and there's no instinct in him whatsoever. He stares blankly into the hollowed out darkened eyes of his attacker and slowly lets the air be cut off from his lungs. 

The pain in his neck amplifies while everything else just...dulls. The sounds of the forest and his own breathing and Scott and someone else running towards him from the same place he thought he saw something move earlier. All of it just _goes_. There's ringing in his ears, so loudly he can barely hear anything else, and someone's shouting, maybe Scott, maybe someone else, again and again – Stiles thinks it sounds like _wake up_. 

_Wake up, Stiles. Stiles, you have to wake up. Wake. Up._

Stiles falls onto the ground, landing smackdab on his hurt arm, and he gasps for air. He tries pushing himself back up and then remembers the shooting pain and howls, flipping over so his back lands onto the packed dirt beneath him. Sounds of a struggle are the only things he can really hear aside from the blood rushing through his ears, claws swiping flesh and growls and scuffling of feet snapping at twigs. Something thumps, like a body hitting a hard surface, and Stiles stares upwards at the foliage. 

_What the fuck_ , he thinks, for lack of anything better. _What the fuck was I just..._

And it _is_ like he's being woken up. Something inside of him finally coming back online after weeks of radio silence and white noise, struggling to come back up to the surface, searching for someone to hear the transmission at all. 

Even as the fight goes on, Stiles only knows that it's not Scott fighting whatever it was that was literally milliseconds away from killing Stiles off, because Scott is abruptly there in Stiles' field of vision. He looks angry, Stiles thinks dully. 

His best friend grabs him, and Stiles makes some noise of protest about his hurt arm, but Scott doesn't appear to care or listen. He just shucks Stiles up into a sitting position on the ground by his shoulders and shakes him, hard. 

“What the fuck was that?” He demands.

Stiles babbles for a second. He doesn't know. Holy shit, he has no fucking idea. 

Scott, clearly, does. “You were going to let that thing – you were -” another shake and it _hurts_ , Christ it hurts and Scott must be able to smell that or feel that, but it's like he just doesn't fucking care, or like he _wants_ Stiles to hurt, wants Stiles to _feel_ something for the first time in what feels like ages, “you were going to let that thing kill you!” 

“I -” Stiles starts, doesn't know what to say. Doesn't know where to fucking begin with what just went through his mind. Everything feels so foggy to him now, like a distant memory that happened years ago or decades instead of literally seconds and minutes. 

Like a dream. A nightmare. 

“ _Why_ would you do that?” He demands, fingers digging into Stiles' arms with bruising force. “Huh? Answer me!” 

“I don't – I don't – it -” he flicks his eyes away from Scott as if he just can't stand to look his best friend in the eyes anymore, and he finds Derek suddenly standing there, blood dripping down his claws, staring at Stiles. He must've been the one the fighting, then, and he must have _won_ , and Stiles thinks the rest of the pack is there as well but he can't compute that right now. He can only focus on the way that Derek is _looking_ at him. 

With huge, frightened eyes. That is not an expression that Stiles has seen very many times on this particular person. If ever. This isn't Derek concerned, or Derek nervous, or Derek anxious. 

This is Derek Hale _scared_. Terrified even. Because of Stiles. And something about that nearly snaps Stiles clean in two. 

“Why would you do that, Stiles?” Scott continues on, voice sounding tight. “Why would you do that to _me_? Don't you understand that I – I _need_ you?” 

Of course Stiles knows that. Of course he knows that just as well as he knows his own name – Scott and Stiles have always needed each other, and Stiles must've been in some kind of fucked up alternative universe inside his own head to think anything different. Especially now. With Allison gone, and Scott's heart constantly beating out slower than usual because of that pain. In a way, Stiles guesses that they're all each other has anymore. 

Stiles can't believe he almost did that. A crushing guilt falls over him, one that he's way too familiar with now, and sick of, feels like clawing his own heart out to get it to _stop_. 

“I'm sorry,” he manages, finally. And when the tears start, he doesn’t even bother trying to stop them. He just wraps his fingers into Scott's shirt, curling them in tightly, pulling his best friend closer, not giving a shit about his dislocated arm, and sobbing, hissing out, “I'm _sorry_ , I'm so sorry I – I need -” 

Scott just goes. In spite of everything, in spite of the last horrible two months of their lives, Scott just goes where Stiles pulls him, wrapping his arms around his best friend and letting Stiles do the same back to him until his face is pressed into Scott's neck and he's just...crying. Uncontrollably. Everything he's been holding back on, everything he's been denying, all of it, flooding out of him so fast he can hardly keep up with himself. 

“I need help,” he says, and he feels Scott sag with relief against him. Scott has been waiting to hear Stiles finally fucking admit that. “I need help, Scott, please, help me, please, please -”

“Okay,” Scott says quietly, rubbing his hand up and down Stiles' back. “It's okay. It's all right.”

**ii. sleepwalking**

“Call it what it was, Stiles.” Lydia sounds clinical. She sounds like this is his fucking psychiatric evaluation. And he guesses, in a way, it sort of is. “You tried to kill yourself.” 

Stiles swallows. “I wasn't _trying_ to – I was just trying to -”

“I know what you were trying to do.” 

Of course she would. Stiles and Lydia don't have the same twisted relationship that they used to have when Stiles was in love with her and she was trying to figure out how to let him down gently without ruining their friendship. They have something else, now, where Stiles doesn't think of her as his constructive _dream girl_ made up in his head, and she doesn't see him as a little puppy that just follows her around waiting for a bone. 

They understand each other, now. There are certain things about Stiles that she just gets and there are certain things about Lydia that he just gets. Not everyone knows what Stiles' endgame with that entire charade was. Derek and Kira and Isaac and Malia – they all scratch their head and try to figure out exactly what's _wrong_ with Stiles, why he's the way that he is, now, if he's ever going to get back to being anything but two separate parts of the same person desperately trying to converge back into one whole. 

Lydia knows better than anyone that Stiles was just being Stiles. Sad Stiles. The kind of person who would give everything up just to save his friends – even if that meant putting himself in harm's way. 

Even if that meant dying. 

“That doesn't really change the fact that it was stupid,” she nods her head firmly and narrows her eyes like she's scrutinizing him from across her dining room table. Her house has always been mammoth and cavernous and disconcerting; nothing but clocks ticking and Lydia's voice calling down the hall with no response. Lonely, Stiles has always thought. Right now, even with the two of them sitting here together, he can't help but feel alone himself. Terribly, terribly alone. 

“You know,” he starts, scratching a thumb across his face and frowning, “I don't get why you would care either which way. Last time you and I had an actual conversation you as good as told me to-”

“Excuse me for needing some fucking time, Stiles.” She flicks a piece of hair over her shoulder, won't meet his eyes. “You've always thought that you're the only one who ever came out worse for wear after – everything.” 

_Everything_. And not even that word and its all-inclusiveness can really cover all that they've been through. “And you've always thought that you have to suffer all by yourself.” 

Lydia looks back at him, away from the grandfather clock she's been staring daggers into for the past minute or so, and her eyes seem blank. “So what do you call what you've been doing for the past two weeks, Stiles?”

She has a point, and Stiles knows that she does. There are many different schools of thought on what exactly the right way to deal with grief is, and maybe there's no truly _correct_ way – but surely there has to be a wrong way. 

Shutting all his friends out. Making stupid decisions based around his own self-hatred for what he's become, now. Running away when he should've stayed put, staying put when he should've been running. That's gotta be the wrong way. It's not like he's in top mental condition to be making any sound judgments, but even he can admit that it's wrong, now. It's been wrong. 

“Is there a reason you asked me to come over?” Stiles asks, dodging the question and the subject altogether. “Aside from this absolutely thrilling conversation we're having right now.” 

She purses her lips together and looks away again. It wasn't exactly easy convincing Derek, his new fucking warden for lack of a better word, to let him make the drive out to Lydia's mansion on the other side of town. 

If Derek had his way, Stiles would be moved into his loft and kept in a barred in jail cell laced with wolfsbane and mountain ash with a complicated keypad code and round-the-clock supervision. In a way, it sort of has been like that ever since that night a week ago, now, when one of Kate's nutso lackies nearly ripped his head off of his body. As soon as Stiles' arm was back in his socket and the cuts on his neck were disinfected, Derek started railing in on him. 

_How fucking idiotic could you be_ and _I have half a mind to send you to Eichen either way so you can't pull a stunt like that again_ and _you're just lucky I know you well enough to figure out what you were doing, you could be dead right now, do you realize that?_

Stiles pretty much just sat there and listened to it, the same way he does when his dad lectures him about shit like that. Arguing with Derek is like arguing with a brick wall; and it isn't like Stiles wasn't fully aware that Derek was right in every sense of the word. It _was_ idiotic to do that, and by all counts a person as unstable as him _should_ probably be getting some type of serious psychological attention, and he really could be dead right now. He should be dead right now. If it weren't for Derek. 

Ever since then, it's been a blur of members of the pack staying overnight at his house, lurking downstairs in his kitchen all night long while Stiles tries to sleep but instead listens to the muted sounds of whatever television show they're keeping themselves occupied with. Isaac apparently is a fan of Lifetime Original Movies and Kira likes MASH marathons. 

Kate is still _at large_ as his father puts it, waiting for her next chance to strike, so really, it makes sense that the pack would be so vigilant in watching out for the resident useless human – considering he's the target of what is shaping up to be a pretty prolific revenge hunt – but it's all starting to get a little...old.

Right now, Derek is standing outside, walking around the perimeter of Lydia's huge house, glaring out into the trees and pretending like he's not listening in to every word that Lydia and Stiles are saying to each other inside the dining room. It was a compromise. Stiles gets to drive off to Lydia's house so long as Derek is in the passenger seat. 

Changing the radio station every time Stiles tries to turn on Top 40 and muttering about how the Jeep needs better brakes and, matter of fact, Stiles should just buy a whole new car because the thing is a piece of garbage and a death trap. Stiles just grit his teeth and fantasized about having the strength to slap Derek hard enough that it'd actually sting. 

Across him now, Lydia stays frowning like it's her automatic facial expression these days, like she can't even necessarily control it anymore. “I just didn't want you to think...” 

Stiles raises his eyebrows and waits for her to continue. 

“...that I don't care about you anymore.” 

“Well,” Stiles starts, feeling his throat get tight from this kind of candid emotional confession. “When you came bursting into Scott's house after thinking I was in trouble, you kinda proved that you do.” 

A whisper of a smile crosses her face, and then is gone in an instant. “I do. Okay? I care about you and I don't want you to get hurt.” 

“Same back to you.” 

“I know.” 

They meet eyes and have a moment, like all the times they've stood up for each other and defended each other and put their lives in danger for the other flashes in between them for just an instant, and they're finally coming back to some kind of a middle ground after every thing. All things said and all things done, you can't just wipe away that kind of a friendship and that kind of a loyalty, no matter what happens. 

“But I just need -”

“Time,” Stiles finishes for her with a nod, keeping her eye contact. “I get that, too. So we're not going to be braiding each other's hair and having pillow fight sleepovers any time soon, then.” 

It's meant to be a joke, but Lydia has a pretty good track record of giving Stiles little more than a grimace and an eye roll at his lame attempts at humor. Keeping in that pattern, she just parts her lips and sighs through her mouth in response. “And another thing, Stiles – I know it's you.” 

Confused, Stiles blinks. “Huh?” 

One of those small smiles comes across her face again as she stands up from the table, a clear sign that this conversation is coming to a close and Stiles should go out and get Derek and leave. So he stands as well. 

“I said, I know that it's you,” she points to the front door with an elegant finger. “And not anything or anyone else. You've proven that.” 

When Stiles gets outside, Derek is already leaning back against the passenger door of the Jeep with his arms crossed over his chest, looking grim in a pair of sunglasses and his stupid leather jacket. Stiles gives him little more than a frown right back as he walks past, unlocking the door and sliding inside. 

“How did that go?” Derek asks casually once they're inside the car. 

“Oh, don't pretend like you weren't tuning in to every word, you big doofus,” he accuses with an eye roll as he starts the Jeep with the familiar growl. “Eavesdropping is just what you do, so don't play innocent with me.” 

It's quiet for a moment as Stiles drives along Lydia's winding driveway towards the main road to take them back into town, back to where Stiles' house is and where Scott is probably already waiting for him. Scott will make a big show out of it being a sleepover instead of him literally watching over his best friend to make sure he doesn't get fucking murdered, and he'll show off whatever new games he has and make popcorn and order a pizza like it's just any other fucking night, like they're still just seventeen year olds with all the time in the world to kill. Like at any second Scott will get a text from Allison. Like Erica will be coming over to laugh in their faces about how much better at Call of Duty she is than either of them are. 

Stiles still can't decide what's worse – pretending like everything is fine or acknowledging that it really, really _isn't_ and hasn't been for a long time. 

“She was right, you know,” Derek pipes up out of nowhere once they're halfway down main street. Stiles glances at him, notices that he's taken his sunglasses off, and frowns. 

“About what?” 

“That it's still you,” he answers, and Stiles grips the steering wheel even harder. 

“I'm so sick and tired of everyone always _saying_ that, when -”

“I don't care,” Derek interrupts brusquely, glaring out the windshield. “You deserve to hear it, so I'll keep saying it until you stop acting like it's some huge charade we're all in on. This is _you_ , Stiles.” 

It's been reiterated by Scott, and by Derek, and by his own father, over and over and over again at this point. That when they look at him, they see him, that they don't notice the discrepancies because they're so miniscule and meaningless no matter what the lighting is. That they don't hear how his voice is too scratchy and low, they don't care about the odd scar on his chest, and they don't care at all that this isn't the way he was born. This isn't the body he grew up in. They don't care.

Stiles does, though. Is the thing. Maybe it means nothing to them, nothing at all, but Stiles was willing to have the throat ripped clean out of this body's neck if it meant he wouldn't have to live in it anymore, so it fucking _matters_ to Stiles. None of them understand that. He doubts if they ever will. They just keep saying _oh, Stiles, this is you, it's still the same you_ , but they don't get what it's like to look in the mirror and see a stranger. 

“Since when do you -”

“Don't get self-deprecating,” Derek interrupts again, this time with more force, rolling his eyes up towards the ceiling of the Jeep's cabin. “I'm getting a little weary of constantly having to convince you that I give a shit what happens to you.” 

“Well, why would you?” They skid to a stop in Stiles' driveway, where Scott's shitty car (even more shitty since the crash in the woods) is already parked; through the front windows, Stiles can see the television flickering. “Seems a little out of character for you, if you're asking me.” 

Derek grits his teeth. "I guess you think the nogitsune would be willing to do for your friends what you did a week ago, Stiles," he hisses like it's a personal attack. "Or that the nogitsune would give a shit about what Lydia Martin thought about him, or about Allison Argent's death."

Stiles swallows, heavily, releasing the steering wheel to let his hands drop down into his lap. He guesses that that's what Lydia meant. About how Stiles has _proven_ himself as - well - himself. Absentmindedly, he reaches up and traces the shape of the self-scar from the oni, thinks about how many times he's done the exact same thing and thought of it as little more than a battle wound. 

Now, with Derek staring at him like this, swearing up and down that it's true - he doesn't know what he thinks of it. 

Derek doesn't say anything else. He just gives Stiles what quantifies as a death glare, throws open the door of the Jeep, and slams it closed behind him before vanishing into the treeline without a glance back in Stiles' direction. Stiles stares after him for a minute, frowning and playing with the keys in his hands. 

In spite of the fact that the conversation was short, and they didn't even really say half the things that they probably both wanted to, he can't help feeling like he just ruined something, or pushed something away right when it was starting to become... _something._

Reformulating The Plan in regards to Kate Argent hasn't been easy. The reality is, they still have no fucking plan whatsoever. The plan thus far has been _keep your eyes on Stiles don't let him out of your sight_ , but what they're going to do if Kate ever just walks right up to the front door and comes barging through to claw Stiles' eyes out...that has yet to be determined. It seems like Derek and everyone else is operating under the _well, I guess we'll just fight and hope to win_ idea, which...

Historically, has never worked. Never once has Derek ever succeeded in that mission and things have gone wrong every single time he's tried it. But really, is there any other solution? Is there any other way to approach this? Kate is coming for them, and what are they supposed to do? Running didn't fucking work, so staying put and waiting for the fight to come to them seems like the only viable option they really have. 

And, not that Stiles would ever utter this out loud to any of his friends under threat of fucking disembowelment, but if Kate really wants to come and kill him because she entirely blames him for Allison's death? Well. Stiles isn't going to argue the fucking point with her. He doesn't want to die, not anymore, and he's not – he's not as bad as he was before everything. 

But the fact remains that if Stiles had never been possessed, then none of this would have happened. All fault still points back to Stiles. She's not wrong, and her and Allison were close at one point before she went crazy murderess on everyone. 

Stiles would never say out loud that he thinks he deserves it. But of course he does. 

Scott accidentally falls asleep at around one in the morning halfway through another shitty movie, and Stiles sneaks out the back door. He's not going to do that whole martyr thing ever again, has learned his lesson and doesn't feel that suicidal tendency inside of him anymore. He was so screwed up before all of that happened, just barely making it from the day to day, hardly holding on to a thread that was about to snap; it's sort of like he needed to almost die to sort of see that that's not really what he wants anymore. He's stopped staring at himself in the mirror with disdain and he hasn't been spending copious amounts of time thinking about burying himself alive. So, all signs of progress, here. Not great, but - livable. Before it was like a constant knife in the gut, again and again and again. Now it's more like pinpricks. Everywhere and all the time. 

He's just _guilty_ and _sad_ and he just wants to be alone to clear his head and come up with a way to dodge Kate without any of his friends having to get hurt just for him. It's a hard egg to crack seeing as how he has yet to even lay eye on Kate or how powerful she is, now. He has no fucking clue of what she's capable of and neither does anyone else. So, he takes off through his backyard and paces around for a while. Back and forth across the grass, glancing out at the treeline every so often. 

It's only two minutes before there's a twig snapping and Derek is emerging out of the shadows like a villain in a bad horror movie, frowning at him with his brow furrowed. “What are you doing out here, Stiles?” 

“Oh _God_ ,” Stiles says immediately upon seeing him, rolling his eyes and throwing his hands in the air. “Can I have ten fucking seconds to myself, please? Just _ten seconds_ without one of you jumping out from the shadows to yell at me?” 

Derek frowns even more deeply, but doesn't say anything. He just glances at the house like he's making sure Scott is still in there, and then looks back at Stiles. 

“What the fuck are you doing here, anyway?” Stiles demands, putting his hands on his hips and huffing. “Scott's here, and we agreed one man on me only. Why are you lurking in the god damn woods outside my house?” A pause. “ _Again_?” 

“Apparently Scott isn't very good at watch,” Derek's voice is even as he says this, calm, controlled. “It's a lucky thing I decided to _lurk_.” 

Stiles sighs again. 

“It's nearly two o'clock in the morning. Why don't you go back inside and get some sleep, for once?” 

“Oh, sleep,” Stiles laughs, somewhat maniacally, twisting and winding his fingers together in an anxious tic he's picked up recently. “A fairweather friend, if I've ever had one.” Stiles sleeps about as much as a fucking fish does, he wagers. He doesn't ever lay down and close his eyes and drift off; he just kind of stays still for a second and shuts down when he absolutely has to out of necessity, only to come back to the surface minutes later. 

Derek frowns again. “You should try some pills for that.” 

“Last time I got drugs for sleep in my system, I tried to kill the girl I just had sex with,” he twists his fingers even harder, “so.” 

Silence passes between them. Stiles is just sort of waiting for Derek to pull werewolf rank on him, pick him up kicking and screaming to drag him up to his bed to force him to cooperate for the first time ever; instead, Derek just blinks around the yard before settling his eyes right back onto Stiles. He looks tired, himself. Stiles can't remember the last time he heard of Derek going back to his loft to just rest for a while. 

“What are you pacing around in your backyard for, anyway?” He asks, now, scrutinizing Stiles' pajama pants and old sweatshirt. 

“Scott's snoring is like the Titanic capsizing,” he jokes – but it falls flat. Derek blinks at him expectantly, waiting for a real answer. Stiles has no choice but to sigh and rub his sleepy eyes, shaking his head back and forth. “Trying to think of what to do about Kate.” 

“Spend a lot of time doing that myself,” Derek says back in a dark voice, murmuring to himself more like. “I thought your plan was to go running off into the woods, get yourself killed, so -”

“Can I not have that lorded over my head, please?” Stiles narrows his eyes and takes a step closer to Derek. “I – that was stupid of me, we've established it. I wasn't thinking clearly. I was sleepwalking, I was wrong, I was selfish, blah blah blah. Are we done now?” 

“I'm never going to be _done_ with worrying about you, Stiles,” Derek steps closer, until they're close enough to touch, until Stiles could reach out and run his fingers through the wolf's hair if he felt like it. “You still seem to not fucking get that. You tried to hurt yourself because you thought it was best for everyone else, and I can't stand the fucking _thought_ of it. So no. We're not _done_.” 

Stiles blinks back into his face and opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. Just a squeak of a noise in surprise, and Derek staring at him so intensely he suddenly feels like he's been ripped open and Derek can see clean through him, to his center. 

“I'm still wondering why you would do that, Stiles. I spend all my time worrying that you're going to do it _again_.” 

“You wonder why I would do that,” Stiles finds his voice and says this, shaking his head. “You really have to _wonder_.” 

“Yes, Stiles. It doesn't make any sense for you to act so -”

“It's _my fault_.” And this is said loud enough that he's sure Scott should be blinking himself awake, looking around himself in confusion, freaking the fuck out that Stiles isn't sitting right next to him on the couch where Scott saw him last. “How does that not make sense to you? Everything – all of this – Allison – it's all my _fault_.” 

Derek looks at him in disgust. That's the only way Stiles can think to describe this facial expression – pure undiluted fucking _disgust_. It's a look Stiles thought he'd have been getting from the group at large a lot more often these days. “How could you even think that?” 

“Because it's true.” 

Out of nowhere, Derek is grabbing Stiles by the shoulders and shaking him. Just one good hard shake, like he's trying to wake Stiles up all over again, and Stiles grits his teeth against the force of it. “That's not -”

“I was the one who got Scott bitten in the first place,” Stiles talks over Derek's voice, feeling like he might start crying if he has to talk about this. “I was the one who let his fucking father get kidnapped by Jennifer, I was the entire reason we had to go under the water and open up our minds like that, and I was the one who was too fucking weak to handle it. I'm the one who let something get inside of me, and _I'm_ the reason Allison's dead.” 

Silence. The crickets in the woods buzzing in his ears. Derek staring at him with his hands still wrapped around the human's upper arms. Two seconds pass, and then Derek's face is falling down into determination instead of open shock, his hands tightening deeper into Stiles' sweatshirt. “Fine. If that's what you fucking think – fine. But would you take it back? Would you take everything _back_?” 

The question is dumbfounding, to Stiles. Absolutely fucking baffling that Derek would even think to ask something like that. “What? _Yes_ , holy shit! Of course I would!” 

“You'd change _everything_?” 

It's a no-brainer. Stiles doesn't even take a millisecond to think about it before he's nodding his head vigorously up and down. “If it meant Allison would still be alive, that everyone who's dead because of me would still be alive -” 

“Stop thinking about everyone else,” Derek commands in a steady voice, fingers digging into Stiles' arms deep enough that it almost hurts. “Be selfish, for ten seconds, and be honest with me.” Green eyes search Stiles' for what feels like minutes on end but what can really only be seconds, and Stiles feels like tearing himself out of the werewolf's grip and making a run for it then and there. “Tell me you would go back to the start of everything and go home that night.” 

Stiles thinks about _that night_ , the one Derek is undoubtedly referring to. When he had changed the course of not just his own life, but Scott's – Lydia's, Allison's, Jackson's, and on and on and on. One decision. One choice. 

So inane and stupid it seems, now, but when he lines it up...

The fact that he can't stand to not know everything, that he has to sneak out of his house at every given opportunity to go see something he shouldn't, that he just fucking had to see that dead body that night – driven to do it, for whatever reason. Just that one choice changed everything. 

It changed Scott's entire nature, his entire life. And like a domino effect, Stiles dragged Allison into the fold (would she have waited to learn the truth about her family? Would she be at home, in her bed, right now – her combat bow tucked into a box in the garage, her mother still walking around her house?), and then Lydia alongside Allison (would she not be hearing voices in her head now? Would she be better off, focusing on her schoolwork, focusing on going to a good college like she's worked hard for and deserves, instead of living in a constant state of fear?), and then _Jackson_ who became a _monster_ for a while there, and even Derek, and Kira, his father, and on and on. 

One choice. Everything would be different if Stiles had done something else that night. The question Derek is asking, then, is that if there was someway, somehow to go all the way back there to the start of it all, if he could catch himself before going to Scott's house to drag him out that night. If he could have that rewind button like he used to fantasize about...would he press it? 

Would he change everything, just for the possibility of something else? 

Stiles swallows, averts his eyes. “I don't know.” It's the honest to God truth, and he knows that Derek can hear that it is. 

Derek lets go of him, finally, but maintains eye contact for a few moments longer. His jaw is tight and his movements seem stiff, like he's having a hard time controlling himself or like he wants to fight Stiles but knows that he shouldn't. That it wouldn't do any good, in the end. 

Silence, and Derek is breaking their eye contact and turning on his heel, moving towards the treeline with the intent to vanish like he's always so fond of doing. Stiles has spent many a night wondering where it really is that Derek Hale fucking goes when he pulls his magical disappearing act; he used to like to imagine that he does really silly things, like shining his leather jacket or waxing his stupid car, going to the barber to have his hair trimmed and styled to be _just_ rugged enough as he likes it while sitting in the chair smoking a cigar and having a jolly old laugh about _broads_ or something like that. Shit like that used to make Stiles laugh to himself. 

Now, he just knows that Derek is going to run back to his stupid loft on the other side of town, probably to sit all by himself and stew in whatever darkness he has inside of himself. It's funny how drowning in your own grief can make you realize and understand the grief of another. 

Right as Derek is about to stride into the darkness, Stiles calls out, “what about you?” 

Derek pauses, looks over his shoulder. 

“If you could -” he clears his throat, feels ridiculous and cut open and bare. “...would you?” With Paige. And then with Kate – Erica, Boyd, and then Jennifer. Mistake after mistake, hardship after hardship. Guilt. Stiles hates that he knows how that feels. 

Derek stands there for a moment longer, his expression entirely unreadable, especially in nothing more than the faint moonlight. Then, he turns his head to face the woods once more, and starts walking, not even looking at Stiles as he says, “I make my choices and I live with them.” 

It's as much an answer as Stiles is likely to ever get, cryptic as it may be. 

And Stiles thinks that he gets it. He gets why Derek even brought that up, even said it at all – he makes his choices and he _lives_ with them. Derek has never once tried to run, like Stiles did. He's never tried to throw himself deliberately into harm's way for no other reason than he thinks he fucking deserves it. 

He lives with it. 

Stiles – he hasn't been living with it. He's been _drowning_ in it. There's a difference between just staying afloat and actively fighting your way to the shore. 

Stiles goes back inside and sits in his bedroom in the middle of the night with the light on for the first time in what feels like years. It's eerie to see his room so lit up, to be able to see everything like this. It's especially eerie to really stare at the empty wall where there used to be pictures and strings and thoughts all spread out right there for anyone to come in and look at. Where the inside of Stiles' mind used to be, essentially. 

Looking at it now, bare and empty and void – it's hard not to think that that's literally what the inside of his own head has been looking like lately. Just nothing except that cold guilt and the creeping feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Which is funny. Because he'd say that that other shoe has dropped to the ground already. Plummeting, still. 

Someone out there is trying to kill him and would be willing to hurt all his friends to get to him, and Stiles has done nothing but sit around feeling sorry for himself. And that's what Derek fucking meant. _Living_ with it. 

That doesn't mean shutting up inside your own head and making horrible decisions that would spiral everyone else even deeper into whatever pit they've been falling into since Scott got bitten and everything went sideways. That doesn't fucking mean tearing apart everything that's left of whatever life you have after the bomb goes off. 

Living with it means that you get up. It means that you try again. It means that even when there's nothing left but rubble underneath your feet, you sit there and you fucking sift through it until you find something that you can use, and you _make something_ out of it. 

Stiles thinks about what Scott said weeks ago, about how Stiles has been _in pain_ , and he thinks about PTSD and the way he curls into himself sometimes when he thinks bad on some of the memories he can't ever seem to rattle out of his head, and he thinks about snake venom and how there's no way for him to tell if it's _still_ running through his veins, and he thinks about _knives_ and pinpricks.

Something snaps inside of him, like the last tendrils of whatever sleep-state he's been in finally uncurling themselves from his throat, and he stands up from his bed and grabs the edges of his desk. He drags it across the floor and out of his way with a _sccreecchhh_ so loud he's sure that Scott is awake, now, kicks it the rest of the way, until there's nothing standing between him and that empty wall. 

He stares at the blue paint and the leftover tape. 

This is what void looks like, he decides. The inside of the nogitsune was like this. 

Looking at it now doesn't make him want to crawl underneath the covers. It _infuriates_ him. 

Scott appears in his doorway, eyes half open, hair a complete fucking mess from the couch pillows. “What's goin' on?” He asks in his sleep thick voice, rubbing at his eyes. 

Stiles stares hard at the wall in front of him. “Do me a favor,” he says in a low voice, picking a red pen up from inside his open drawer. “And bring me my laptop from downstairs.” 

That wakes Scott up. He's finally cognizant enough to take in what's happening in front of his face; Stiles and his old friend The Murder Wall reconnecting, the red pen in his hand, the way his face finally looks like an expression Stiles used to have constantly on his face. 

The _doing something about it_ expression. 

“What are you gonna do?” He asks, inching his way out the door towards the staircase at the end of the hall. 

“I'm going to figure something out.”

**iii. waking up**

Isaac narrows his eyes, leans forward towards the wall, frowning. “What the hell is that supposed to be?” 

One of his pale fingers is pointing at the scrap of notebook paper, ripped out with jagged edges, with a stick figure haphazardly drawn in black Sharpie. It has two uneven eyes and a sideways parentheses smile, spiky hair sticking up at all angles. Stiles pauses in the middle of stringing a green thread between the stick figure and the only half way decent photograph of Kate Argent he could find from a google search, and shrugs. “It's me, obviously.” 

“Right...” Isaac nods; and he's giving Stiles the same look he's been giving him for weeks. That _this kid is about to lose his fucking mind_ look that used to piss Stiles off, but now sort of makes him feel like he's getting somewhere. If drawing himself in stick figure form and pinning it to his wall is the craziest thing he's fucking doing lately, then he'd say he's in pretty good shape. 

The green string connects Allison and Kate with stick-figure Stiles in the middle. The implications clear in that statement are that Allison is dead because of Stiles and Kate knows that – green is for solved. Remember?

Scott frowns. “Okay, but -”

Stiles holds a finger up to stop him, and produces another ripped out notebook paper with another stick figure and pins it right below the Stiles stick figure. This figure has fangs sticking out from its smile, and a V shape in between its eyes to make it look particularly evil. “The nogitsune,” he supplies, standing back to admire his handiwork. 

The wall is nowhere near as full as it used to be. There's a picture of Peter Hale, who turned Kate, and then Kate herself, Allison, Derek (who's involved because he was tricked by Kate), Derek's family (Kate's most notable kill and the reason Peter ever accidentally turned her to begin with), and a map detailing Kate's possible hideouts and last known sightings. 

They don't have much to go on. They only have what they know for sure. Stiles doesn't know what he can figure out with all this information, what there is to _solve_ , how they can glean a plan out of all this. But having it laid out certainly can't fucking hurt and it – it really makes him feel like his old self again. Maybe that's the only reason he's doing it at all. 

Derek stands back, looking like he still hasn't gotten a wink of sleep since the last time Stiles saw him hours ago in the middle of the night, and at least for the first time in x number of weeks, he's not grimacing or frowning or looking put upon. He's just standing there watching Stiles work, like he's genuinely interested in these proceedings. 

Stiles points at him. “You're the only one who's really seen her, right?” 

“I guess.” 

“Well?” He holds his arms out expectantly. “What does she look like, now?” 

Derek shifts slightly, like he's uncomfortable with the question. 

“You said you were sure she's a shifter, now,” Stiles continues on, prompting Derek to speak up. “So how are you sure? Like, was she foaming at the mouth and coming at you with claws drawn, or...”

“Her face,” he interrupts. “I could tell from her face. But it wasn't – Jesus. It wasn't like a wolf's face; not like mine or any others I've seen.” 

Scott and Isaac share a concerned look. 

“It was – different.” 

“Different like...”

“Different like she might have powers that I'm not aware of different.” 

“Different like Jackson becoming the kanima different,” Stiles nods his head, chews on his pen, and turns to stare at the wall with a narrowed eye. “The shape you take reflects who you are. I guess it was too much to ask that she be turned into a were-cockroach.” 

“She's not a kanima,” Derek says with a head nod. “I'm sure of that. She's a were. I'm just not sure a were _what_.” 

“Were _bitch_ ,” Isaac interjects with a shrug. “I think that's really all we need to know.” 

“Plus she has her friends,” Stiles tacks up another one of his crude drawings – this time of some skeletons with billy clubs and mean looking faces – right beside Kate's picture. “Who aren't very nice.” 

“They're fast and strong as hell,” Scott says. “I'm an alpha, and I could barely overpower that thing.” 

“In summation,” Stiles sticks a question mark in the center of it all. “We have nothing. Great work, team.” 

When he turns around, they're all three of them staring at him. Isaac and Scott share another meaningful look, and Derek cocks his head to the side like he's inspecting to make sure this is the actual Stiles standing right there in front of him. 

Truth be told, Stiles still isn't completely sure about that part, himself. 

“Well – what do we do?” Scott asks in a timid voice, looking from the wall to Stiles, back and back again. “All we know for sure is that she's pissed and wants to kill you and is super strong, now.” 

“We kill her.” The boys all turn to look at Derek, still leaning back up against Stiles' dresser and looking particularly annoyed with these proceedings. “Obviously.” 

“Do you have a giant-bone-man kryptonite that you haven't told us about yet?” Stiles snarks, raising one eyebrow in Derek's direction. “Seeing as how you're the guy who managed to kill the one that tried to get me.” 

Derek pushes himself away from the dresser and shrugs his shoulders, casting his eyes over to Stiles' little drawing of them on the wall. “That was mostly adrenaline at seeing that thing with its hands on you,” he confesses this like it's nothing. Like it's the weather or an off hand comment. “If one of them touches you again, I'm liable to rip them apart.” 

Another look between Scott and Isaac, this one with raised eyebrows and small smirks to themselves like they're in on some big secret – Derek shoots them a glare, and Stiles just stands there in front of his brand new murder wall feeling like he's missing something. 

“Same goes for Kate,” Derek spits the name out like acid leftover on his tongue. “That's the plan. We make them fucking sorry if they come anywhere near you.” 

“Oookay,” Isaac says with a bit of a snicker, “me and Scott are going to go...” he trails off, moving his hand in the air like there's more to that sentence but he can't think of it at the moment. 

“...to find the girls and tell them whatsup,” Scott finishes, ushering Isaac out of the room with a smile on his face. “You guys can stay here and – um.” 

“Whatever,” Isaac says over Scott's shoulder as he gets pushed out of the room. “Do _whatever_ you want.” 

Scott slams Stiles' bedroom door behind him, and then it's just, bizarrely, Derek and Stiles standing there by themselves. Stiles feels like an entire movie just flashed before his eyes in the span of twenty seconds; Derek getting all intense and protective and Isaac and Scott fleeing the scene before whatever they think is about to happen happens, like they don't want to have to stand there and watch that. 

An entire movie filled with nuances and suggestions that Stiles isn't catching up to, yet. He scratches at his hair, frowns, and then looks at Derek. “That was weird,” he decides. 

Derek frowns himself, crossing his arms back over his chest. Like a petulant kid. Then, he decides he's going to dodge the subject altogether. “You seem to be getting back to your old shit.” 

Stiles turns around and looks at his wall – it, for the first time in forever, even with Kate Argent staring out at him, doesn't make him feel like vomiting. “Yeah, well...” he scratches his hair again nervously, “...what you said last night.” 

“What'd I say?” 

He clears his throat and then sighs. “About making choices.” 

Derek looks surprised. His eyebrows raise up into his hairline and he actually drops his arms down to his side, dropping the macho-man appearance for ten seconds to actually just be a normal dude for once. 

“Had me thinking. There's not really any point in being so,” he thrusts his hands out in front of himself like that projects some kind of emotion; Derek understands, if the way he nods slightly is anything to go by, “...and I just thought. I don't know. Maybe it'd make me feel okay again?” 

“So, do you?” Derek's voice is quiet as he asks this, searching and hesitant. “Feel okay? As if you're Stiles all over again, now?” 

Stiles smiles to himself, and it's not the kind of smile that's really happy. It doesn't touch his eyes, he can feel that on his own face. It's more amusement than genuine happiness, more foolishness than anything else. Because that's not what's going on here. This isn't Stiles suddenly being back to okay again, this isn't Stiles snapping out of a reverie and going _man that was fucked up okay let's get back on track_. Because Stiles doesn't think he'll ever be able to get back on exactly the same track he was on before. 

That's not what this is. This is crawling. Half-dead and barely making it, but trying nonetheless. 

“Stiles is -” he starts, and his voice cracks around the name. “...Sometimes it feels like he's gone. You know? It's like I can't find him. Myself, I mean. Like I'm just lost somewhere inside my head and I'm just – trying to find me. I guess that's what this is.” He gestures to the wall behind himself, and shrugs like it's all so casual. But it's not. 

Suddenly, Derek is in Stiles' personal space, his body heat there and against the skin on his arms exposed from Stiles' t-shirt. Fingers wrap around Stiles' chin to tilt it upwards, so Derek can look directly into his eyes, and Stiles swallows, anxious. His heart starts beating faster, and he knows Derek can hear it, but the wolf doesn't react. Just stares at him intensely, his face unreadable. “I spent days looking for you, once,” he says, and Stiles can still remember the dark circles under the werewolf's eyes, the way he looked so fucking tired after tracking Stiles' scent all around Beacon Hills. He'd forgotten about that. Was too caught up in his own shit to really take note of what Derek was even doing. “What makes you think I'm not willing to look for you again?” 

Isaac and Scott's desire to flee the scene before anything like this started happening makes absolute fucking sense. This is clearly shaping up to be a private conversation about - well. Stiles isn't sure. “I don't understand why you're being this way, now.” Why he's being so...Stiles doesn't have the words to describe how Derek's been towards him lately. Just – this isn't the way he's ever thought of Derek being. And yet here he is, being this way, right in front of Stiles' very eyes. 

“Sometimes,” Derek starts, and he looks away from Stiles, dropping his fingers off of his chin – as though he's not ready to look Stiles in the eyes and say this, just yet, “sometimes you have to almost lose something.”

It's not a full thought, a full sentence, and it's just half of what Derek wants to say and Stiles knows that. Yet, he understands it all the same. Exactly what's being suggested here, Stiles fucking gets it. 

And then it all makes sense. Derek searching for him when he was gone away, when the nogitsune took him, Derek coming to him first when he thought that Kate Argent was back, Derek being so unreasonably upset every time Stiles would say he's not the _same_ anymore, Derek being so insistent on watching over him, Derek saying time and time again how much he gives a shit what happens to Stiles – all these things Stiles has seen as individual moments and parts of Derek's personality. But when he puts them all together, connects the dots and opens his god damn eyes...

“Are you -” he has to stop and clear his throat, to get the scratchiness out of his voice, to sound more sure and confident when he really, really isn't right now. “...are you saying that when that thing almost killed me out in the woods – and when the nogitsune nearly killed me as well – that you almost lost something that you...?” 

“Something that I care about,” Derek finishes for him in a voice just as quiet as Stiles'. “Yeah. I'm saying that. You have to understand that the thought of _you_ getting hurt again...”

“Oh,” Stiles squeaks. What else is there to say, now, except for _oh._

“I _can't_ let that happen. I _won't_ let that happen.” A big hand comes up to cup the side of Stiles' face, right up against his cheek, and Stiles thinks this is the most gently he's been touched in his entire life. Like something small and delicate and prone to break at any given second. Derek's strength in comparison to Stiles' definitely suggests that that's exactly how Stiles is right about now, in Derek's hands. “Do you trust me?” 

“Yes,” Stiles says instantly. Ever since that night in the pool, with the kanima, Stiles has trusted Derek almost implicitly. He doesn't even have to think about it – of course he fucking trusts Derek. “And I – you know. Care about you. Back. Like...you know.” 

It's a word-vomit gobbledigook mess, but Derek nods his head up and down like he understands perfectly. “Will you let me do something?” 

Stiles nods himself. “Yeah.”

In front of him, Derek's face changes. It goes from open and expectant, to firm and determined; as though he's bracing himself for something. Maybe rejection. 

And then, like he wants to get it done and over with quick before either of them can change their minds, Derek is kissing Stiles on the lips. It's not at all like a movie and it's not cinematic. There's no swelling music. It's not intense or passionate – it's just their lips connecting for two seconds, maybe less, and then Derek is pulling back again and looking Stiles dead in the eyes.

Waiting for his response to that. 

It's certainly come out of left field, Stiles thinks. At least internally; Derek has had the way he thinks about Stiles on display for everyone to see, and apparently everyone _has_ seen, but Stiles has just taken a while to catch up. It's jarring, especially since he's just come to the realization that Derek does not, in fact, just tolerate him and protect him because he needs it. 

But because Derek himself needs to do it for him. Because Derek – cares. Specifically, and in a big way, about Stiles. Enough to kiss him on the lips. 

Instead of saying anything, Stiles just pushes himself forward and kisses Derek again. He wraps his arms around the wolf's neck and pulls his body as close up against his own as he can, feeling that closeness and that body heat on top of him like a weight holding him down. 

Derek clearly has zero problems with this, if the way he willingly opens his mouth and deepens the kiss is anything to go on. 

It's just a kiss. It's nothing major. There's no sweaty panting desperation, or out-of-nowhere passion; they're only just now discovering that this is something that they both want, and they're taking their time. Just a kiss. Derek keeps his hand on Stiles' cheek and puts the other on one of his hips, and it's just a slow, careful thing with no rush. None whatsoever. 

When Stiles pulls back, he keeps his arms locked around Derek's neck as he looks him directly in the eyes. “So,” he starts, nervously. “That.” 

Derek _hmm_ 's in assent, doesn't offer anything else. What else is there to say or do? 

“I'm hungry,” Stiles says. “I don't know about you...”

“I could eat.” 

Stiles takes Derek downstairs into his kitchen and starts making sandwiches. Just like that. One moment they're kissing and the next Stiles is asking Derek to pull the cold cuts out from the fridge. In a way, it's the most bizarre thing in the world, and in another, it just feels natural. Neither of them have ever been particularly big on the whole _romance_ thing. Sandwiches and kissing, why not? 

“You know,” Stiles starts, smoothing mustard over a slice of bread while Derek is already half way through his own sandwich, “I've liked you since Junior year started.” How much, he was never quite sure of, because he always just kind of...tried to ignore it. First of all, he was sixteen (and is still seventeen) and his father is fucking Sheriff. And Second of all, Derek was so far out of his league it wasn't even funny. 

Or, maybe he wasn't all along. Because Derek nods his head and smirks at the confession. “Figured that out myself.” 

“Right,” Stiles smiles to himself. “Because you could probably constantly _smell_ my crush on you. That's fucking embarrassing.” 

“It would've been,” he agrees, “if I hadn't thought about you the same way.” 

Stiles rips the top crust off of sandwich and Derek watches this carefully, like he's filing that information away for later use. When he sits down across from Derek at the table and starts picking at his sandwich, bite by bite, he feels the need to say something. It would be wrong of him to not bring this up, to not at least mention the obvious elephant in the room that neither of them particularly want to direct their attention to. “You thought about _me_ like that.” 

Derek furrows his brow as he swallow the last bite of his food. 

“Like...” Stiles trails off and refuses to look Derek in the eyes. “...the old me.” 

“ _Stiles_ ,” Derek sounds like his chastising a little kid as he says it, leaning over the table to get closer to Stiles and pushing his crumby plate out of his way. “Don't start on that again.” 

“I'm just pointing out the obvious,” he defends, staring pointedly down at his half eaten sandwich. “I'm not the same anymore. There's no use pretending -”

“I'm not fucking pretending anything. You're _you_. That's it.” 

Stiles draws a pattern into the table with his index finger. He's heard that enough times by now that it's starting to sound made up. Fake. He can't have this argument, not again, so he lets the subject drop. If Derek has no problem kissing whatever Stiles has become now then that's on him. As for Stiles, he'll go back to fingering the scar on his chest and wondering where it is exactly that it came from.

He imagines that it's from the separation of himself; like, the nogitsune had to make this body, slice it open to shove Stiles' soul or whatever the Hell inside, and left behind in the wake of all that was this nasty, disgusting looking thing on his chest. Just a constant throbbing reminder that he's not truly himself anymore. 

Derek can ignore that all he wants. He has that fucking luxury. Stiles doesn't. 

While Stiles is sitting there picking at the rest of his sandwich, frowning and feeling like all the progress he's made is being unraveled because he just can't fucking get past this _body_ thing – Derek's phone starts ringing. 

Derek's not big on the social aspect of his life, especially not when it comes to technology. He has his pack and his friends, mostly people like Braeden who he calls when he needs a fucking gun or something like that for Christ's sake, but most of the time if he wants to see them, he just lurks around outside their houses and waits for them to come home. Stiles would call it weird and creepy, but Derek was, literally, _raised by wolves_. Lurking is just what he does by nature. 

That being said, Derek's phone literally never fucking rings. He keeps that thing on and charged for one reason and one reason only – bat signals. Stress calls. Emergency _get here right the fuck now_ screaming on the other line. 

The ringtone, the one that comes auto with every iPhone, has started to sound to Stiles like the music in the horror film when everything is about to go horribly, horribly wrong. It's more of a trigger for panic than anything else in his life. 

Derek immediately reaches into the pocket of his jeans and answers it in a tight voice.

Because Stiles isn't a werewolf, he can't overhear anything that's said on the other line; but when, within five seconds of the call being answered, Derek's eyes shoot up to meet Stiles' with anxiety written all over his face...he makes the guess that whoever it is and whatever they're saying, it's not good. 

“We'll come to you,” he says, and then makes like he's going to hang the phone up – but then he pauses. Even Stiles can hear the faint sound of Scott yelling at top volume, something like _don't you fucking dare_. Derek pinches the bridge of his nose. “What's the better option? Me and him sit here in his house and just wait? We're better as a pack fucking _unit_ , Scott, I'm not -” another pause. Derek curling his hand into a fist. “She won't be able to touch him.” He meets Stiles' eyes again. “I'll make fucking sure of it. If she wants to see him – let's let her take a god damn look.” 

Then, he hangs up. Stands up from the table and grabs Stiles by his upper arm, hauling him into standing and carting him off towards the front door. “Shoes on,” he says shortly, and Stiles struggles to get out of his grip.

“What's going on?” He demands, scattering a bit as soon as Derek lets go of him. “Is Kate -”

“Kate,” Derek starts with a snarl, bending over to pick up Stiles' discarded shoes where they're lying in a small pile in front of the door, “has the pack cornered at the fucking loft.” 

He pushes the shoes into Stiles' hands and gestures for him to put them on, and to hurry. Stiles can do nothing but as directed, his fingers shaking as he bends down to tie on the laces. “We're going there, right?” 

Derek grimaces. “Apparently she hasn't even touched any of them. Just threatened them – she knew you and I would come either which way.” 

Right. Because the same thing about Stiles that makes him so fucking stupid loyal is the exact same thing that makes Derek so idiotic and stubborn. Both of them are always willing to throw themselves directly into harm's way for the sake of their friends – or pack, as it could be said even for Stiles at this point. Kate knows that about both of them. 

“Scott was trying to convince me to either not come, or leave you behind.” 

Stiles snorts, rising up into a standing position and wrapping his hand around the knob on the front door. “Typical. Let's go.” 

Derek eyes Stiles for just a fraction of a second; takes him all in. From the ratty jeans to the even worse t-shirt and flannel combo, the old converse sneakers on his feet, the mess of his hair; and Stiles doesn't know what it is that he sees, there. Whatever it is makes him pause. Cock his head to the side. It's only a second – not even long enough for Stiles to say _come on_ – but long enough for Stiles to catch it. 

Then, Derek is pushing Stiles forward and slamming the door closed behind them. 

It feels like a point of no return on the drive over. The fact that they even have to drive there at all has Stiles on edge – how fucking idiotic it is that they have to do something as inane and typical as _drive_ to go save their fucking friends. Through town, where Derek has to go the speed limit and stop at stop signs and red lights, because it'd be worse and waste more time to be pulled over than to just follow the rules. The entire time, Stiles can't help thinking that either he's going to fucking die, or his friends will die, or – and then there doesn't feel like any other options. 

If Derek can smell how absolutely petrified Stiles feels right about now, he doesn't comment on it. Just puts one hand on Stiles' knee and drives faster as soon as they're out of town and heading towards the warehouse district where Derek's idiotic loft is. 

When they're in the elevator, Derek takes a great big fat inhale of the air, and says, “it's just her.” 

“What?” Stiles asks, raising his eyebrows. No bone-men? That doesn't seem like the wisest fucking idea from where Stiles is standing – is she really that god damn cocky that she thinks she can take on the entire pack without her band of goons to do the dirty work for her? 

Unless those things caught onto the fact that Kate is possibly fighting a losing battle, with this one. Unless she just decided she was annoyed with them and killed them off because, oh yeah, _she's a fucking psycho_ ; either way – it seems like a mistake on her part. Like, as if the entire pack couldn't handle killing one beta were with teamwork and all that? No matter how powerful she thinks she is or actually is. 

Once Derek has the metal door slid open, Stiles suddenly understands. 

The rest of the pack is sectioned off pretty effectively with a curved line of mountain ash, keeping them penned back and away from the door, unable to reach Kate and unable to reach Stiles or Derek. Derek sighs through his nose when he sees this, as if it's more of an annoyance than an absolute ass-fucking of a problem, and slams the door closed behind him. 

For Kate, the surety of the win has never been what she's been about. It's always, always been about getting her way. And in this case, her _way_ is fucking the McCall pack over and making a show out of it for the sake of her little revenge pact. She didn't bring her back-up team along for the ride because she's decided she doesn't want anyone else taking the glory from her. 

She wants a one-on-one death match. Probably with Stiles. 

Derek catches onto this, apparently, because he shoves Stiles back behind himself, hard enough that Stiles stumbles a little, so he hardly gets a good long look at what else Kate has got going on. 

From what he saw, not very much aside from herself and the pack all standing in a line with grim looks on their faces, she doesn't have anyone else with her aside from a bored looking human hunter standing with a gun dangling from her hand, smacking bubble gum between her teeth. She must've been the one to pull the little mountain ash trick, then. 

Derek moves like he's about to pounce on top of Kate, but her familiar voice makes a sound like _ah-ah!_ , how a mother might talk to her child trying to reach for a second cookie after dinner. A gun cocks, and Stiles peers over Derek's shoulder to try and see – the spare hunter has got her fucking giant black gun pointed directly at Derek, looking bored even then. 

“Wolfsbane bullets,” Kate supplies with a lilting laugh. “Typical, right? Just playing it safe. You know how much I like _structure_ , Derek.” 

Derek's shoulders tighten at hearing her say his name, and Stiles frowns. He wonders, not for the first time, exactly what it is that transpired between the two of them when Derek was just a sixteen year old kid, fooled by her charm and personality and looks. Derek's never talked about it much, and Stiles has never felt it his place to ask – but, most likely, it was enough of an emotionally twisted, fucked up scenario as Stiles could come up with. 

“Now that I've got all your little pets chained up,” she points her finger at Scott in particular, and he growls low in the back of his throat, walking back and forth along the line of mountain ash; Stiles thinks _can't he get past that now?_ , but doesn't have time to dwell on it, because Kate starts talking again. “I thought you and I could have a little heart to heart – just chat and catch up and all.” Her eyes flick and stare directly into Stiles', boring straight through to the back of his skull. “After I kill that.” 

_That_. 

Derek growls in a warning, pushing Stiles back farther away, and Kate zeroes her eyes on the motion like a camera lens zooming in on each individual detail. A grin lights up her face, all feral and calculating and cold. 

“Oho,” she chortles like she's looking at puppies in a pen, putting a hand over her heart in mock awe. “Isn't that just so sweet. You really know how to pick them, Derek. I mean...” she walks forward slowly, like she's playing with her food, and Stiles curls his fingers into Derek's shirt. “...first _me_. I set your entire family on fire and listened to them burn to death,” she ticks this off like it's nothing, even though Derek's entire body jerks at the reminder. “And then Jennifer, who, really, knocked off half of Beacon fuckin' Hills. And now – _this_. You really like that whole murder spree thing, don't you? Something about blood on the hands really gets you going, huh?” 

“Stiles hasn't killed anybody,” Derek contends, voice a growl. Over his shoulder, Stiles sees Kate smirk. 

“Stiles Stilinski, the gawky teenage nothing, maybe didn't kill anybody. Didn't have it in him,” she offers another casual shrug, “but _that thing_ has.” 

Stiles' fingers turn even sharper in Derek's back, like he's searching for a lifeline there, trying to hold himself down and keep him grounded. As many times as he's called himself a _thing_ , as many times as he's looked in the mirror and seen something else, no one else has ever said it out loud to him like that before. With such disdain and hatred and _disgust_. 

“This _is_ Stiles,” Derek says back evenly. “He's human.” 

Kate cocks her head to the side, smiling even wider. “Is he?” 

“Yes.” Derek doesn't hesitate, doesn't have to think about it or mull it over or give Stiles a good long look to see for himself. He says it like it just _is_ , and that it's so obvious, and Kate is a fucking idiot for thinking anything differently. 

“The nogitsune killed Allison, Kate,” Derek's voice is low as he keeps talking, and as soon as Allison's name is said, Kate's smirk fades and she turns murderous in under a second, glaring and growling something inhuman out from the back of her throat, eyes glowing green for a moment. “ _We_ killed the nogitsune.” 

Out of nowhere, Kate's screaming, surging forwards with a hand thrust in Stiles' direction. “Then what the fuck is _that_?” 

“It's Stiles,” Kira insists from the sidelines, arms crossed over her chest. “There's nothing of the nogitsune left inside of him, he has the mark to prove it!” 

Stiles has thumbed along the _self_ mark many, many times, late at night, trying to convince himself that it's true. That it means what Kira's mother always said that it did. He never quite believed it. 

And Kate, apparently, doesn't either. She throws her head back laughing, maniacally, psychotically. The spare hunter smirks to herself as well, and Stiles really wishes he could be let in on the god damn joke here. “Right. Like I give a _shit_ what a couple of Japanese phantoms have to say on the matter – are you telling me you don't _see it_? Step out of the way, Derek.” 

Derek growls, doesn't move. The hunter cocks the gun without having to be asked. “More or I'll fucking shoot you.” Something tells Stiles that she's not very big on bluffing. Allison wasn't, either. 

“Derek,” Stiles hisses, shoving at his back. When Derek still doesn't move, and when the hunter moves her finger like she's about to pull the trigger, Stiles just steps out from behind Derek himself, until he's standing side by side with him, staring Kate in the face. He holds his arms out, like _ta-da_ , and Kate looks unimpressed. “Here I fucking am.” 

Kate gives him the single dirtiest, most disgusted, most hate-filled look any other person has ever fucking given him. “Are you having fun parading around as a teenage boy, still?” 

He swallows, thickly, wills himself to say, for the very first time ever out loud, “I'm not void,” and then wills himself to _believe_ that. 

“Let me ask you a question, Derek,” she addresses the wolf, but keeps her eyes locked on Stiles as she paces back and forth slowly, coming just slightly closer to Stiles every couple of seconds, “you ever wonder if you lot killed the wrong one?” 

“No.” 

“You're fucking idiots if you think he couldn't trick you all over again,” she hisses – the spare hunter drops her gun and backs up a couple of steps once Kate starts edging too close, and Stiles watches as Scott paces back and forth...closer to where she's standing over the line. “Isn't that what those spirits do?” 

“You're absolutely out of your mind, Kate,” Derek insists, putting his arm out in front of Stiles and pushing him back a couple of inches. “Your grief has made you blind to fucking reality. Does he _smell_ possessed to you?” 

“I don't care,” which is psycho-talk for _you're right but whatever_. “I want that thing dead. For Allison.” 

“Allison,” Scott interrupts, coming to a stop less than two feet away from where the hunter is standing, “would've sooner killed you than let you put your hands on Stiles to hurt him. She was a good hunter and a good person – unlike you.” 

“Funny how you think she's so great, yet you let her _die_ , Scott.” 

“She died doing what she thought was best,” Kate swivels her eyes in Isaac's direction, “you know – the _right thing_. Ever heard of it?” 

“It's exactly why I'm here actually,” she shoots back, casting another long look in Stiles' direction. “The right thing is to get that thing taken care of before it hurts anybody else.” 

As if Kate has ever given an ounce of a shit what happens to anyone but herself, Stiles thinks, narrowing his eyes. Kate was never half the hunter that Allison was. And it's wrong and fucking unfair that she gets to come back with a scratch from an alpha, growling and glowing green eyes, while Allison rots underneath the ground. It's not fair that Allison had her entire life to change the Argent code and make the world safe and better for wolves and humans alike, and she had it all taken away from her. 

It's as Stiles is having this thought that Kate starts stalking towards him. Derek pushes Stiles behind him again, and Stiles stumbles a little with the strength of it; it's all in vain either way. Because as it turns out, possibly a little something that Kate either didn't hear about or just completely fucking forgot about – yeah. Scott can break through mountain ash barriers. No big deal. 

He reaches his arms over the line and breaks through it with a _bang_ , rips the gun out of the hunter's hands, cocks it, and shoots. 

It takes seconds. Stiles stumbling, Scott grabbing the gun, the hunter screaming like she's being murdered, gun shots, silence. 

Stiles peers over Derek's shoulder again, this time coming all the way around to see the damage. The hunter herself is being held easily in one of Scott's arms before he tosses her off to Malia, who grabs her and twists her arm in such a way that she cries out in pain. Hostage, Stiles guesses. 

Kate, on the other hand...

Scott fired three pretty clean shots of wolfsbane into her chest, so for the moment, she's sort of bleeding out on the concrete floors of Derek's loft. The very first thing that Stiles thinks when he comes out from behind Derek and sees her there, in a pool of her own blood, writhing in pain and shaking, tears streaming down her face, is that Derek's going to have to buy a new place. Because no way is Stiles going to let him live in the same place where Kate Argent bled all over the fucking place. No way in Hell. 

The second thing he thinks is that maybe it's wrong to just let her die, like that. Maybe they should try to help her. 

The third thing he thinks is that that's a fucking idiotic idea, and of course they have to let her die. This time, for certain. They can't have her coming back around again to fuck with them for a _third time_. 

Scott, Stiles and Derek walk forwards toward her, and then they're just hovering over her, watching as she dies. It's probably the most disturbing moment of Stiles' life since he's come back from the nogitsune. But he just stands there. Derek doesn't have any discernible emotion on his face as he watches the light slowly go out of her eyes, and Scott looks like he's not having any fun, not at all, but there aren't any other options. 

Stiles feels sick to his stomach. 

He wonders how many other people are going to have to die until everything just – stops. He gets no joy, none whatsoever, out of watching her die, and he guesses, in a way, it's a reminder that he really isn't the nogitsune anymore. Void would've loved this, very very much. 

But Stiles feels hollowed out inside.

“What now?” Malia asks from behind the mountain ash, tightening her grip around the hunter's arm. “What should I do with her?” 

“Chris Argent,” Derek says, flicking his eyes down to where Kate's sucking in her last breaths. “He'll know what to do with her.” 

“That was anticlimactic,” Isaac says in a pinched tone of voice, before sighing and glancing in Kira's direction like he's looking for some agreement. “I was hoping for a shootout or something.” 

Derek's hand falls onto Stiles' back, right as Kate officially stops breathing, and Stiles can't fucking look away from her body even then. “Hey,” he says quietly, moving his hand over to Stiles' shoulder to squeeze it. “Are you okay?” 

Stiles stares at the blood as it inches closer to his feet. Thinks about traces of snake venom. “Yeah,” he says back lowly. “I'm fine.” 

He knows he's won – but it just feels like yet another loss. Another death. Another body someone's going to have to bury.

+

Stiles tries staying away from Derek. 

At first, he convinces himself that he's just genuinely too busy to make the time to go and just _hang out_ with the werewolf. He spends an entire two days deep cleaning his room, and then the hallway, and then the bathroom and living room and kitchen and everything in sight. He scrubs with bleach that makes his hands feel dried out and chapped, spends hours meticulously shining all the silverware and fancy china plates that they haven't even used in years, rips the blackout curtains off his windows and breathes in fresh air. 

Sometimes he thinks he sees speckles of blood on the ground, or can smell gun powder in the air. He does everything over again. 

He starts doing an inordinate amount of grocery shopping, an inordinate amount of driving around aimlessly, ignoring his phone every time it rings or pings with a text, going for long walks in the woods with no purpose, getting lost in the woods and having to call his dad to send a ranger to come and fucking find him. 

Genuinely too busy to see Derek. He convinces himself of this. 

He has to convince himself of this because he doesn't know what else to do. With the threat of Kate gone and gone for good, when the bone-men never came back to finish what she started, when it stopped being a threat on Stiles' life and became _nothing_ except for him all by himself...

And there's nothing, _nothing_ Stiles hates more these days, than being alone with himself. With the scar on his chest and the memories of blood in his head. 

Stiles hides because he doesn't want anyone to have to see him. Least of all Derek. Who doesn't know any better. 

He shows up anyway, proving Stiles' point. 

The wolf just comes climbing in through Stiles' window unannounced, dropping down onto the balls of his feet. Stiles isn't even startled; annoyed, yes, but startled, no. He just turns around in his desk chair with his arms crossed over his chest, and stares at him. Derek stares right back. 

“You've been ignoring my calls,” he accuses. 

Stiles shrugs. “Lost my phone, I think.” 

Derek cocks his head to the side as he stands up to his full height, frowning. “You just lied.” 

The frown on Stiles' face deepens, and he spins back around in his chair to face his laptop again. “I don't appreciate you fucking doing that, Derek.” 

“I don't appreciate you lying to me.” 

“What do you want me to say?” He hedges in annoyance, tapping furiously at his keyboard. “I just didn't want to fucking talk to you.” 

It's quiet for all of five seconds, aside from the keys smacking against Stiles' finger tips, and then Derek is huffing loudly and grabbing onto the back of Stiles' desk chair, pulling him back and nearly sending him flying.

He really, really needs to invest in a chair without wheels. He's had it up to here with the fucking werewolves in his life doing that to him. 

Derek spins Stiles around in his chair so he's facing him again, and then squats down right in front of him, glaring. “You think I don't know you well enough to get what this is about?”

This is all too familiar to that time weeks ago with Scott, when Kate was first becoming a problem. Stiles crosses his arms over his chest again and looks pointedly away, to a corner of his room. 

“It's not about me, is it?” Stiles doesn't say anything, so Derek presses further. “Stiles. It's not about me. Say it.” 

Stiles breathes through his nose. “It's not about you,” he mumbles, because he doesn't have much of a choice right about now. Derek must be able to hear how steady his heart beats over the truth. 

Derek sighs like this is the worst thing, like he's so tired of having to do this all the time, of having to _constantly_ have this conversation with Stiles again and again and fucking _again_ , of Stiles making progress in the form of one step forward and two steps back.

But he does it anyway. “All that stuff Kate said,” he begins, hitting the nail on the fucking head and making Stiles feel like fucking crying at how easy it is for Derek to just _get_ it. “...she didn't know what she was talking about. She was an unstable person, she always has been, and she was just talking.” 

Stiles sniffles, and his chin starts to wobble. He's tired of fucking crying all the time. “You don't get it,” he says, and it's all he can say, because his throat tightens. 

“Why don't you tell me, then?” Derek's voice is so soft and gentle, like a whisper, really. When Stiles doesn't answer aside from shaking his head and refusing to make direct eye contact, Derek prompts him again with a soft _Stiles_...

“I _do_ feel like a _thing,_ ” he hisses, swiping angrily at the tears seeping from the corners of his eyes. “I feel like a fucking – inhuman _thing_. All the time. This body is fucking disgusting and I _hate_ it.” 

Derek reaches up and wipes at Stiles' tears himself, thumbing them away easily and not saying anything for several seconds. He just lets Stiles cry and waits patiently for him to be done, like he doesn't have anything else he'd rather be doing or anyone else he'd rather be with, right now. Even though Stiles is still a complete and total emotional fucking mess. 

“It just felt the same,” Stiles continues on, pushing Derek's hand away from his face because he thinks he's done crying, now. “Being called a thing and being reminded I'm responsible for Allison, and – and Kate and the blood...it just felt like it used to. Like I was him again.” 

“What's all that have to do with me?” He asks, dropping his hand down onto Stiles' knee and squeezing in a comforting gesture. “You can talk to me about all this, you know.” 

Stiles _could_ talk to Derek about all this; because out of all his friends and all his pack members, Derek is the one who would understand the most. That guilty feeling, and the way it just fucking _hurts_ to have to be himself sometimes, hurts to have to look in the mirror and see _that_ face staring back at him. Derek would understand some of that, Stiles knows.

But that wasn't really and truly the problem. 

Stiles looks away from Derek yet again, focusing instead on a point right beyond his head. “I'm – horrible. And you shouldn't have to...” Derek's expression turns stormy, but he waits for Stiles to finish. “...feel obligated to touch me, just because you -”

He's interrupted by Derek pushing himself upwards and kissing him. A real, _really_ real kiss. Like, fingers tangling into Stiles' hair, pulling him down for more, tongue fighting its way into his mouth and practically eating him alive, kiss. Stiles sighs into it, groaning from the back of his throat and putting his hand on Derek's chest, running his fingers up and down the contours of it. 

When Derek pulls back, he grabs Stiles by the chin and forces him to look directly into his eyes. “I touch you because I want to. I don't feel _obligation_ , Stiles, do you understand me?” Stiles doesn't understand, so he doesn't pretend like he does. Derek growls underneath his breath, shaking his head back and forth in annoyance. “I want you – scars and all. I don't get how you can't see that, Stiles. Do I have to _prove_ to you that I want this body as much as I did the last one?” 

Without warning, Derek is standing up and pulling his shirt up and over his own head, tossing it off to the side in a pile. He raises his eyebrows down at Stiles, as if waiting for a complaint or an order to stop – when none of that comes, he reaches down for his belt buckle. 

Stiles is kind of stuck frozen in the spot as he watches Derek get undressed in his fucking bedroom – mostly because literally two minutes ago Stiles was crying and he didn't know that kind of thing apparently got Derek going, but also because, _right_ , Derek Hale is taking his clothes off right in front of him. It's a good thing the Sheriff is out at this particular moment. 

When Derek is down to nothing but his briefs, he leans down and kisses Stiles on the mouth again, gentler than the time before it. “Let me see you,” he murmurs against Stiles' mouth, running his fingers along the side of his neck. “Let me touch you.” 

Stiles swallows thickly and leans away from Derek's mouth. Then away from Derek altogether. The wolf stands there patiently, waiting, and Stiles wonders what Derek would do if Stiles were to say no to that. Knowing him, he would probably just collect his clothing and get dressed without complaining, because Derek is like that. Derek would never force Stiles to do anything he didn't want to, would never pressure Stiles into it. If he got the slightest whiff of anxiety or discomfort from the human, he'd back off instantaneously, no questions asked. 

He stands up from his chair on legs that feel like they're made out of strawberry jam or pudding or some other fucking useless substance unfit for holding up a human being. With shaking hands, he reaches down to tug on the hem of his shirt.

The last person who saw him even half naked was Scott. The day of Allison's funeral. And that...was nothing like this. Nothing at all like _this_. 

Once the shirt is up and over his head, he reaches down for his own belt buckle and can't look up at Derek's face to see what his reaction is. He physically _can't_ look, doesn't wanna know, can't stand to know. Stiles doesn't fucking think he'd be able to survive a rejection like that, no matter how nicely or well intentioned it was phrased. He bites the bullet and tugs both his jeans and boxers down his hips, over his thighs, past his calves and down to his ankles, until they're completely off his body, and he's just standing there.

In his horrible, foreign body, standing in front of Derek Hale. Completely and entirely exposed. 

As soon as Stiles is standing upright again, Derek has his hands on the human's upperarms and is guiding him towards the bed, kissing him on the cheek, forehead, mouth, light as a feather. 

“Okay,” he says, gently pushing Stiles back onto the bed with a bounce. Stiles pulls himself backwards with his elbows until his head is resting on his pillow, entire body spread out for Derek to look at – and Derek does exactly that. He climbs up onto the bed on his knees, on top of Stiles' legs, and runs a hand along Stiles' bare chest. “I don't see anything wrong here.” 

Stiles swallows. Feels like he's being humored. “The scar.” 

A finger skirts down the length of it, all the way from his belly button up to his nipple. Stiles shivers. “This?” 

“It – I don't know what it is,” Stiles answers him, voice colored with shame. “I don't know where it came from. It's...his. I think.” 

“This is your body,” Derek reminds him in a low voice. “It's _your_ scar.” 

Before Stiles has the chance to contest that statement, Derek is running his tongue over it. Stiles gasps in surprise, back arching into the sensation almost against his will or better judgment. His _better judgment_ would tell Derek that that's fucking gross and the scar is gross and he shouldn't want to do that. 

Instead, Stiles lets him flick his tongue along the edges of it, taste it, while all he can do is writhe underneath the ministrations, tempted to reach out and run his fingers through Derek's hair. 

“See?” Derek asks, pressing a kiss to the tip of the scar closer to this bellybutton. “You feel that? That means it's yours. What else, then?” 

Stiles huffs out a shaky breath, feeling himself hardening right in plain view of where Derek can see it. “I – missing some freckles. There used to be one,” he lifts a finger and points to a spot on his hip, “right here, but it – just vanished.” 

Again. Derek leans down and kisses the exact spot, moving Stiles' finger out of the way to grant him more access. He sucks the skin in between his teeth and Stiles hisses, hips bucking upwards as Derek leaves his mark on his pale skin. “And?” he prompts after a moment, once his lips pop off of Stiles' skin loudly in the quiet bedroom. 

Stiles lifts his finger to a spot close to his collarbones. “Here.” 

Derek climbs upward and kisses there, too, feather light, raising his eyes to Stiles in question. Stiles points to his jawline – the spot where there used to be a whole constellation of them right along his cheeks, but now there are only a few. Something about this makes Derek smile; as if he's been waiting for Stiles to say that, or something, has been thinking about it ever since the first time Stiles came back to and the missing speckles were obvious. 

He leans up and kisses Stiles' cheek, once, twice, before sitting back up onto his haunches and staring down at Stiles' face, running his finger along the scar again. “Is that all?” 

Stiles nods, slowly. “The last of the things you can kiss, at least.” The rest of it – his strange eyes and the way he feels all the time. That's not so easily dealt with. 

The finger on his scar digs deeper, like Derek's trying to massage it or drag a reaction out of Stiles. “I don't see the problem,” he says earnestly, cocking his head to the side as he appraises Stiles. “You look the same to me.” 

Stiles' cheeks heat up, a dark red he's sure of it, and he looks away. “I'm not the same. I'm _not_ , I'm -”

“Shhh,” Derek kisses Stiles on the mouth, his jaw, down into his neck until he's pressing his lips into the shell of his ear. “Don't. Let me show you, all right? Let me take care of you.” He trails kisses back down Stiles' neck to his collarbones, around his shoulders. Down along Stiles' chest, flicking his tongue teasingly over his nipples to draw quiet moans out of Stiles' throat, until he makes his way towards his naval. 

It's around this time, after minutes of kissing and licking and being reverently attended to, Stiles starts to crack. He grabs a fistful of Derek's hair and throws his head back into his pillow, puffing out heavy breaths, squirming underneath the hands Derek has on his hips to hold him down in place. 

“Fuck,” Stiles hisses when Derek's tongue smooths along the inside of his thigh. He can't even spread his legs any wider because Derek is practically sitting on them, so he's just trapped there – getting fucking licked with a raging hard on and precome leaking all over his stomach. “Derek, Jesus Christ, I'm -”

Derek drags his body backwards until Stiles can kick his legs free – which is exactly what he does. As soon as he has the chance, he's spreading his legs wide open and practically whining, reaching his hands forward in a grabbing motion, looking for Derek's hair again. 

“Do you like this?” Derek asks him, leaning forward so Stiles can run his fingers along the wolf's face and neck gently, as if in thanks for touching him like that. “Stiles? Do you want me to -”

“Yes,” Stiles breathes, pants, jerking forward and pulling Derek down towards his body. “I – I want you to.” 

“I don't have any lube,” he confesses, and he says it like that's the nail in the coffin on this entire night. 

Like Stiles isn't a teenage boy with a bedside table. 

Mindlessly, Stiles pulls his hand free from Derek's hair and rips the drawer open, pawing around inside of it for the familiar shape of the bottle he knows so well. Once he's got his fingers on it, he's practically flinging it at Derek, who catches it easily in mid-air and unscrews the top. 

“Bubblegum, huh?” He teases, raising his eyebrows. 

“Shut – shut _up_ ,” Stiles hisses back with a thin smile. “Women's centers give them out free, and I don't need the pharmacy cashier telling my father I was buying lubricant, all right?” 

Like this is the most charming thing that Derek has ever heard of, he grins to himself and shakes his head, squirting the stuff down onto his fingers. 

Stiles sits up and says, “I'll just – hands and knees,” because that's what he's seen the most often in porn and it's not like he's done this before, so he's trying to act like he has. Hands and knees is the easiest position, right? 

He's halfway flipped over before Derek stops him with his clean hand, shaking his head and pushing Stiles back down into the pillows, lifting one of the human's legs up over his shoulder. “Like this,” he insists, reaching his other hand down to feel for Stiles' hole with slick fingers. “I want to look at you.”

And something about that. Even with all the kissing and the licking and all the things that Derek has said to him about this – something about that. About _I want to look at you_ when it would've been easier to just flip Stiles over and have him that way. 

It's the first time that something real blossoms inside of Stiles chest. A real flicker of belief that he's not so fucking horrible and terrible to look at with this new body – that the body itself is his and Derek likes it, doesn't mind looking at it, actively seeks out opportunities to touch it and be close to it. 

Close to _Stiles_. 

While Derek fingers him and glances up to look at Stiles' face again and again to make sure he's doing okay, Stiles just feels...normal. For the first time in forever. Just a normal person having sex and being treated like an actual human being, instead of as this disaster thing that was born out of the worst couple of months of the pack's entire lives. That's how Derek makes him feel. Normal. 

Coming from Stiles, after everything he's been through, that's huge. 

Derek slides inside of him roughly, pushing both of Stiles' legs up to give him better access, and Stiles just breathes. In and out, carefully, focusing on the feeling of Derek literally being _inside_ of him, moving around and getting his pleasure just from Stiles. The sounds Derek's making, quiet little puffs of breath and the occasional soft groan, the way he handles Stiles so gently in his hands but _fucks_ him hard enough to reach his prostate and drag a moan out of Stiles every other thrust...

Stiles is glad of this new body, in this moment. That that time with Malia in the basement wasn't this body's first – but that he gets a do-over, here with Derek. Losing his virginity the way he was meant to, with someone he genuinely cares about and someone who genuinely cares about him, who wants to make him feel _good_ and _better_ and vice versa. 

Derek reaches down halfway through, letting Stiles' left calve drape over his shoulder, and starts jerking Stiles' neglected dick off with quick, fast pumps to match the pace of his thrusts. Stiles screws his eyes shut and pants, smacking the top of his head into the headboard of his bed and feeling completely and totally taken apart. Any second now, he keeps thinking, any _fucking_ second now - “Derek,” he breathes, fingers scrambling along in the bedsheets for something to grab onto, “fuck – that feels so -”

It's all he manages to get out before he's coming all across his chest; Derek strokes him through it perfectly before dropping it down and fucking harder into him without the distraction. Stiles lies there in post-orgasmic limbo, barely feeling it anymore or really even registering it that Derek is fucking him. He only remembers that obvious fact when Derek swears and comes himself, working himself through his orgasm inside of Stiles and jerkily thrusting along. 

After, Derek vanishes for a minute and returns with a wet hand towel. He cleans Stiles' chest off, running the warm cloth over Stiles' sensitive skin, and then lifts his legs back up to collect any of Derek's come that came leaking out of him. Because, right – Derek was _inside of him_. Still a weird fucking concept. He wipes Stiles off slowly and carefully, raises his eyebrows and looks Stiles in the eyes and asks, "are you sore?" 

"Probably will be," Stiles confesses quietly, cheeks heating up. "The good kind, though."

Derek smiles and drapes himself down right beside Stiles on the bed, even though there's really only so much room to be shared, and kisses into his neck again like he can't stand to not be touching Stiles for even a second. “I don't care what body you're in, Stiles,” he promises, sighing into his ear. “You're perfect either way.”

And Stiles – he's starting to believe that.

+

“I keep turning around, you know?” Scott wrings his hands, looks out the window of the loft with a squint. “Even when I know there's – nothing back there anymore. I keep turning around.”

Stiles nods his head. He's been there too; millions upon millions of times, even back when his mother died. He used to try and turn around and expect to see her standing there in the living room, waving a paintbrush around and asking him if he wants to try to paint something himself, or turn around and see her pulling up into the driveway in the Jeep, smiling at him and asking him how school was. 

Now, he turns around and hopes to see his old self in the mirror. But like Scott says.

There's nothing back there anymore.

“Some things you can't even find in hindsight anymore, Scott.” 

“I know. Christ – I – I _know_ that,” he runs his hands down his face, again and again, like it's all he can do anymore. “The truth is, I can't even fucking remember what it was like to be – before. Maybe that's the worst part.” 

It is the worst part. It's the absolute worst part, when you can't even remember the good things anymore, because the memories are destroyed. Scott closes his eyes and tries to remember Allison, and Derek closes his eyes and tries to remember Erica and Boyd and his entire family, and Lydia tries to remember Jackson; but each and every one of them can see nothing more than vacant spaces and blood on their hands and dead bodies. Memories ruined, irrevocable. 

People ruined. Irrevocable.

Derek appears in Stiles' line of sight, hands a plate with a sandwich on it to Scott, who thanks him quietly and immediately goes back to staring out the window, and then to Stiles. 

When Stiles looks down at it, he notices that the top crusts have already been ripped off for him, and he can't help but grin quietly to himself and then over at Derek – who's way too stoic to ever smile doofily like that about something as stupid as a _sandwich_ , so he just sits there munching on his own quietly. 

If there's one thing that Stiles has learned from all of this, it's that yes. Yes, people can be destroyed. Most people will have to go through something that will absolutely rip their fucking souls out and stomp all over them, turning them into mush – until there's nothing left anymore.

And then they have to start over. Start fucking over. Begin again. You can't get back to who you used to be before, there's just no way to do it. You fall apart. And the pieces are jagged. And they don't fit together anymore. 

But it doesn't mean that you can't _become._ Having to build from the ground up – having to sift through ground fucking zero and having to work through explosions and fires and singed flesh _hurts_. 

But that's just what people do. 

It's just what Derek did when his family died, when his sister died, when he had to kill his own uncle, when Boyd and Erica left him. All those times, Derek had to start over. And he did it, and he – he keeps doing it. It's why he was the only one who could really ever get through to Stiles. Because he understood that Stiles wasn't ready to build, yet, and was willing to stand there and wait for him to at least try. 

Maybe the most important thing that Stiles has learned is that no one can simply wake up in the morning, drained of the toxins that paralyzed them to begin with; everyone has to lay stranded on the ground for as long as it takes the traces of the poison to bleed out of them, and there's no telling how long it will take. There's never any telling in how long a hurt can _hurt_. The trick is getting through it. Weeks, months, years, decades, or, sometimes, never. This is okay. But we can't know. 

The only thing anyone can be sure of is that some hurts are knives and others are pinpricks – but all of them bleed the same.

**Author's Note:**

> the title, by the way, is from Clean by Taylor Swift. Which you should seriously listen to no matter your preconceived notions of Taylor because it's a song that everyone needs to hear at least once - it's just one of those songs that Taylor's so good at writing that's so personal to her but SO applicable to literally every living person (goes on my fiftieth rant about Taylor in yet another a/n) 
> 
> anyway, thank you so much for reading and Happy Summer!!! (aka Happy Part-Time Jobs everyone!!)


End file.
